Anticipating Wilderness

When city noise and city stress

Conspire to wreck my happiness;

When television, cars and noise

Usurp the place of forest joys,

Then to my heart cone memories

Of lakes and bogs and quiet trees.

I listen, and again I hear

The cries of wild geese drawing near.

I listen, and my heart’s deep core

Knows lake waves lapping on a shore,

The gentle sounds of leaves at night,

The awakening of flowers to light.

Once more the fox is on the ridge;

A bluebird nests beside a bridge,

The hummingbird, a whirring gem,

Adorns the lily’s diadem,

While every bird song heard again,

Helps to alleviate my pain.

The misty silver of the bay,

Where gull-wings pattern early day,

The hermit thrush’s wistful chime

Beside a bog a sunset time,

The message of a meteorite

Pencilling fire across the night,

The fragrance of the pines in rain,

Cloud shadows drifting over grain –

All these are surcease, balm an djoy

When work is  hard and tasks annoy.

And so I mortgage city stress,

Anticipating wilderness.

date unknown