On This Mountain

I look at the photograph -
at the wild expressions of on two faces -
the man's, wilder
as they make their escape to freedom
in that Bilboes summer of 1965,
I look at their mottled irises
sweaty upper lips
And I hear the skitter of skeletons, strewn all around, in their ears.
All this in the painting.

I hear gun shots raiding the air
How his hand grips hers
Their bodies quailing against the felt tipped Escambray mountains.
The Pico San Juan gleaming silver this moonlight,
guarding the valley of sugar mills.

Regimes chase out even air;
The low patio walls of houses would ha e crumbled so easily...
So they ran...
God knows which village they made it to
which peasant gave them bread...
God knows by which river they caught their breath
and smiled at each other through burning charcoal eyes.

Their footsteps, soft as a calf's underbelly,
must have stumbled over tree stumps, boulders, mountain terrain,
as they stumbled towards an awning of freedom -
Did they hear the drums, Fernando?

They must have done it for their mountains
The mountains must have done it for them;
for the courage of their convictions
and in some corner of their heart, I believe,
they also did it for love.

*********