Things I’ve Learned While Roaming the Earth

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These little woods I often tread,

A land aglow with words unsaid;

A bending fold of birch and pine,

Where all the thoughts of man refine

To understand the grand design.

Each morning finds me close at hand,

With fingers apt for wide demand,

That toil neath the golden hum,

While striking every longing dumb

That speaks of what I could become.

With work comes peace in simple things,

That need but small imaginings;

No solemn thoughts to far unwind

That restless soul of humankind

Who mourns a something left behind.

I seldom drift now past the way

Where all the fallen deadwoods lay,

But gather slow the warming load

The trees, each morning, have not owed,

Though give to heat my quaint abode.

But when I roam those distant routes,

My aims and all my life’s pursuits

Seem tame against the wild plain,

Idyllic in the sprinkling rain,

Convicting me of a nameless pain.

I’d lose myself in such a realm

Beyond the swaying oak and elm –

But good things wait to draw me home,

To turn my feet from where they roam,

Toward the low-lit pathway home.

How oft my feet have longed to stray

Further down that distant way –

And though it calls, still I stand here,

For worried eyes through the window peer,

And wait for me to reappear.

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