The Mountains Comes Down the Mountains

Art by Andy Mister

By Patrick Whitfill 

Maybe there’s some great end game
I’m missing out on with this last
century’s revision to the nursery rhyme

about the baby stashed in a tree, but I
always thought, with kids, it’s best to lie
only a little. Point to the window,

say outside, because there’s nothing
about transparency they need to know
When my son noticed his shadow

the first time, we had a choice to make:
confess to what we don’t know,
or lie, tell him it’s forever, the sun,

I mean. Now, when the song arrives
at the part where the bough breaks,
the wind bells up, and the nurse who wedged

the fussy newborn like a peg into a crevice
of the tree reads a book nearby, the baby
naps through it all. But I’m good on that.

We sing the part about the snap. We sing
the abandoning that happens right before
the storm everyone knows is coming down

the mountains comes down the mountains.

---