The House in the Mountain, by Maurice Ferguson

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Blue Mountain                                       Jeri Rogers

Maurice Ferguson, our distinguished Literary Editor has been with Artemis since the early days in the 1980’s, serving on our Board and editing various yearly journals. Here is one of his fine poems, “The House on the Mountain”.

The House in The Mountain
Maurice Ferguson

I did not see it until now
snuggled just below an evergreen
forest where the fringe of winter’s
leafless trees embrace a pine thicket
in the gap two ridges create.
Only in this moment did I see
the house in the mountain;
before now, the timing
would have been all wrong
and I would have missed
the flash of its eaves, the blink
of such a modest cottage.
I can just imagine
it’s fireplace and single chimney
but I cannot find the road
that leads to its threshold,
cannot mark the exact place
it veers off from the highway
I imagine it abides on a path
beyond my reckoning
Still, not satisfied with the tricks
distance plays I return at night
to search through the darkness,
and there, a singular light
gleams down from the mountainside
where some mysterious god is
hanging a lantern beyond my reach

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