Many thanks to Suzanne Olivante for the visual prompt which meshed nicely with Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-A-Day Challenge prompt.

Today is a Two-for-Tuesday prompt, which means you can pick one prompt or the other, do both separately, or mix both together. Do whatever makes you feel good. Here are the prompts:

• Write a stop poem.
• Write a don’t stop poem.

Old Man in the Mountain

Like driving up an icy road,
stopping is losing control,
and on this hiking trail
whose marks had been erased
by the wind and alpine snow
stopping was slow death.

But it seemed the warmer
option than climbing
on frostbitten feet,
just a short nap
under a blanket of ice
and sluggish dreams.

The Old Man in the Mountain
they’ll call me, like the giant
of Franconia Notch, my body
like stone growing larger
to match the legend,
a frozen cautionary tale.

Don’t Stop.