To Letchworth....With Love

As a last farewell to summer, here follows an ode to my beloved Letchworth State Park, the place that has been my sanity and my Shangri-La for the past two years. This was written sometime in midsummer, and now as the clammy wet blanket of November settles over the northeast, it seems a fitting memorial. The seasons will come and go, land and people and culture and nations will change, we will walk through fire and water and wastelands...but the Creator of this beauty in which we rejoice is unchanging, unfading, and unfazed by the sands of mortal time. Someday His redeemed children will see His face...and it will completely eclipse the full glories of all the world put together!

So enjoy--Longings from Letchworth.

Letchworth--my Rivendell.

I have fallen under the spell

of your deep green tresses.

Endless wanderings in hidden 

elven glens.

Your burnished pine carpet,

your carven stone

etched by Time.

Your graveyards of white birch,

resting dreamlessly in deep forest.

I'm captured by the voice of your waterfalls,

joining the song of your river

on its winding sojourn,

always rolling north--

to the Great Blue dividing countries.

I linger entranced in your secret places, 

listening long,

kissed by the breeze,

wrapped in serenity under your leaves.

Sunlight breaks into 

a million glittering drops,

casting themselves over the lip!

Liquid life runs icy strong over skin,

thrilling to the shivering depths of me.

It calls me to follow.

Light plays through your soaring branches,

dropping in warm patches

to your mossy carpets.

So I watch and I wander--

the song of Eternity calling,

always calling my heart--

calling me home through

your sacred halls.

Letchworth--my Rivendell.