Poetry by Allan Scherlen
My foot sinks
and snow crunches softly
before Charlie’s tombstone.
Beneath snow far below,
the deceased night-watchman
lies buried.
My boots filled with snow
as I read the headstone
of the watchman;
the stone was short, thin
and almost
submerged in snow.
His sister, poorer than Charlie,
charged the cost of his tombstone,
too expensive for her cleaning wage;
the etching was delayed,
written too shallow to read,
devoted to Charlie’s night work.
Allan Scherlen is a poet and librarian at Appalachian State in NC for twenty years. The mountains have inspired him. Poems have appeared in many journals including The Bluebird Word, Azahares, Appalachian Journal, As the Crow Flies, Progenitor, The Hong Kong Review, and Galway Review. Read more at https://scherlen.squarespace.com/.
