Paul's Regret or Hindsight is 20/20

 The Sunday Muse #173

Photo Prompt*

http://www.guido-vedovato.it/Quadri/autoritrattoconfisarmonica.jpg

 

Ol’ Paul Bunyan

sits on the hill,

the one that's made of Babe’s bones.

 

As Paul thinks back

on his youthful days,

regret weighs his heart like stones.

 

So many forests

cut to the ground,

all of the landscape denuded.

 

His hound dog howls

to Paul’s sorrowful tune,

up on that hummock secluded.

 

If Paul had known then, 

what he knows now,

he's have turned his back on the world of men. 

 

 ©2021 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

 * The painting is a self-portrait by the artist Guido Vedovato.  The man and dog look bigger than life, reminding me of Paul Bunyan.  "Babe's bones" making the hill is in reference to Paul's ox, Babe the Blue Ox.  After her death (from eating too many hotcakes) he buried him and the place became the Black Hills.  Now that I notice, the peaks in the painting mirror the actual Black Hills.