Winds Of Life

The winds of life often carry us along. This poem I wrote about my love of nature and all it offers to our enjoyment.

Ode to the Winds of Life

I fell in love at the age of five

With the great outdoor world

And roamed as far as I dared

To the orchard and barnyard

By eight, to the briar covered hillside

And over the top until out of sight

Heard the frogs chirp in the spring swamps

Until the lightning and rain drove me home

Never one to sit and chat

Didn’t need entertained

No herd mentality for this one

Off by myself, and never bored

At fourteen years, stalked the hills

Chopped the trees for firewood

Gathered the nuts and apples

As far away as I could carry the sack

Never sought companionship

Although Brother Bill followed along

When he couldn’t be eluded …

Or was needed

Years sped by and I learned of the rivers

Like the Tigris Euphrates and Ganges

Overflowed their banks

To give life to the fertile valleys

Saw fire-ravaged forests bloom in the spring

Land stripped for coal and clay

Struggle into life and grow new trees

Saw the wildlife return and nature replenished

Learned that we grow trees

To make baseball bats and houses

And new ones replace the old

And life marches on

Felt the troubled ocean carry the steel ship

Like a cork up one mountainous wave

And plunging back down

Nosing into the froth of the valley

As if to submerge in death

Lady Katrina shook the rigs

And dumped oil like a glazier

Into the Louisiana swamps

Nature’s microbes, ever hungry

Cleaned it up … an easy snack

The hot winds of the Sahara Desert

Fling themselves across the Atlantic

Generating hurricanes to drive the heat north

Keeping the earth gently inhabitable

Decided that God isn’t in the Church

He wanders across the land

And the oceans

The Great Spirit of the American Indian