I'll always remember those bluffs, those canyons they embraced, the cool air on the trails, the kind of quiet that is only found in the woods.
Giant City State Park, located in the hills of Southern Illinois, seemed an almost magical place to go when I was a child. What a treat it was to trudge those trails, imagining all the others who had walked there before, when it was all wilderness.
As a child I relished family outings there, especially those which extended into the evening, when we'd sit around, watching the crackling flames dancing in a fireplace in one of the shelters, listening to the adults trading stories, hoping to catch some of the night sounds of the woods, too.
Later, I took my own young family there to camp, to go tramping down the same trails I had explored, to let them feast on the same sights and sounds I had enjoyed.
In more recent years, when there were just the two of us on trips back to the place where I grew up, we always managed at least a drive through the park. Those drives rekindled so many memories ... so many ...
This poem, which embodies some of those memories, is part of my first collection, Chance of Rain, published by Finishing Line Press:
AIR LIKE FOG
Morning air clings to me like fog
as I enter the deep, cool canyons
that thread the water-rounded bluffs,
where I pause for a moment to look
about, to drink an ancient silence
that flows and deepens while lichens
struggle up the pocked, towering walls,
up, up toward a swallow's nest, high
where clinging ferns await the random
blessings of summer shade and transient
yellow light; then I notice soft-edged
flecks of light dancing on the trail
where others must have stood watching,
where they may have heard, as I do now,
a crow, distant, calling them by name.
© 2005
***
Today's word:
cracklingAfterthoughts ... in response to your comments:
Thank you, Helen, for that comment ... for adding to the collection of memories which abound with those who have ever visited Giant City ... but particularly those who were lucky enough to have grown up within striking distance of the park. Just strolling its trails always brought a sense of its place in history to me.
1 comment:
I can't pass up commenting on this poem and the Chosen Words introductiory. Of course, to me, Giant City is one of the most pleasant memories I have. It began even before my brother helped put it together in the CCC camp. When I read your poem, the looking up at the narrow passageway paths between the cliff sides, came to life again. So did the picknicking and creeks...and family. The thoughts, as a kid, of the Indians who were there before me walking them...and the Civil War soldiers hiding there...all came alive again. You mentioned the woods...there is no more beautiful than those with the dogwood and rosebud. I loved the words and wording of your poem. Your poems always have a slight turn or twist to them in the ending.
Bravo! Helen
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