* The Mayor of Camel's Hump: A Vermonter's Life

The Mayor of Camel’s Hump

A poem in memory of

Albert  Meade

raised on a farm

 near  the 200-foot-deep

Quechee Gorge

in

Vermont

  Gulf Bridge at Quechee Gorge
The oldest surviving steel-arch bridge spans a scenic location over the Ottauquechee River at Quechee Gorge in Hartford, Vermont. Constructed in 1911 for the Woodstock Railroad, this deck arch bridge spans 285 feet high above the gorge. 
Image courtesy of Robert McCullough

ADAGIO

It is January and snow is falling.

A letter from your niece tells me

you have been in the ground since

August, after 86 years above it.

An authentic Yankee, pitchfork and cow pail,

growing up tending the earth;

now its dark harvest.

BARN

Once when grown you saw a barn

burst aflame from hay stacked too

green, in vernal combustion.

House - - woodshed - -  hen house - - barn,

hitched together, perpendicular to the

road , pulled out like an accordion;

they stopped the barn from taking the house

by tying ropes around the hen house and

pulling it down with a Model-T Ford.

RAILROAD

The railroad was your spaceship. Its gleaming face

would shake your house as it roared by the front

of the farm. Such speed and power and majesty

were wonder to a boy who four miles to and four

miles from school, would walk, sun or snow.

Boys once greased the tracks on the hill outside

your farm, and that Black Behemoth slid back down

the slope a several times before it made its way

on through to town. Old men now admit they were those

boys, and though you know their names and speak them

with a smile, no admission comes from your mouth.

GORGE

A mile from home that track bridged a gorge 

200 feet deep. The track was one mile shorter to town than

the only road, and you obeyed your father’s command:

Never walk across that gorge. At least in daytime you

obeyed, when others could see. And, besides, walk across

that gorge you could not: there were no railings on that

bridge, just rails.

NIGHT

But crawl you could on hands and knees, and did;

holding the rails for dear life, edging out across

the gorge with river so far below. And so it was

one black night halfway across the bridge, crawling

on hands and knees; you came up against another - -

head-to-head coming from the other direction,

crawling and holding those rails tight - - -

your own father.

Was he come looking for you late to home, or just

taking, in reckless shortcut, the route to town

he’d forbid his boy to take, knowing all that

gravity and impulse can do to flesh?

MOUNTAIN

You grew up and never married those 86 years and

said to the younger listener once, “Don’t make

my mistake and wait too long” about choosing a wife.

There was no sermon or self-pity in that sentence,

just saying how it was with you.

When you were 82, twenty times in one season you climbed

a mountain, sixty miles upcountry, till other climbers

dubbed you the Mayor of Camel’s Hump.


Then, 
without

warning,
strength waned and slight confusion set in.

And so,
the nursing home.


But later a reprieve - - -

when strength returned  - - - to a kind of dormitory for

the infirm, where you could walk outside your mile

each day, whittled cane, tentative steps now.

Then the river gorging through your veins came

head-to-head with some blockade:  Paralysis.

And, like Lincoln, a night of labored breathing:

The feet that made you mayor of the mountain stopped

now, halfway across the bridge.

HARVEST

The other side wanted you more than this one

And so, stepless, you stepped over, not crawling

This Span.

Once you told me calmly about assisted death, “The

Bible forbids taking a life.” You never quoted

Scripture and didn’t then, just a simple The Bible

Says, kind of statement.

You would wait calmly for Nature to do her work.

But you did not fear to say the wait had grown

lonely and monotonous. It was a hard wait, like

watching grass grow into hay.

Paul D. Keane

1/12/99

I met Albert while volunteering at a local nursing home. We became friends.