the Old One

 "STOP RIGHT HERE!"
and suddenly I knew why.
"Remember me!"
and I did.
How many years? Or decades?
And not my intent to visit him,
I had other plans that day.
Yet by happenstance I passed
and suddenly I was here
and he was there,
alone as almost always,
ice-battered, wind-torn,
crumbling under negligence
and the slow terrors of time.
Sometimes happenstance wins,
so I stopped, and he stood there,
and I remembered what he stood for.
And though his eyes are broken,
his vision is clear, he says,
clear back to the buffalo,
clear back to the council fires.
Clear back to Before.
Then, "Leave me alone now,"
he said,
"alone with my visions.
I'm nothing to look at,
but I can still see.
Remember me."
And I do.