On the horizon in the evening,

My hills parley with the setting sun.

Negotiating the less intensity of sunlight,

As its cool blanket of forest cover,

Is now tattered.  

I meander homesick for old hills.  

Where pines, cedars, and oaks

Grew in abundance,

And where ferns swayed with life,

As their branchlets gracefully kissed

Water of a vagabond hill stream.   

Lack of rain now have led to

Forest fires which ate up,

Pheasants, predators, pines, loam, and leaves

In death my hills now have become,

Stalagmites of barren soil!

In its woods,

I didn’t know what I was looking for,

May be a shy mimosa leaflet or a fawn! 

Frisking from the moist understory of chestnut,

But all I see was a pile of dead shrubbery,

Rising ominously like the Third Reich.