Nature Notebook – Free To Go

FREE TO GO
By: Joel E. Byrne

Back in ’97 while vacationing in Texas I somehow got this poem into the Big Bend Bull (the park’s newsletter)… “Dedicated to the good folks of Big Bend National Park in grateful recognition of their continuing efforts to keep the magic in the air.”:

Free To Go

I roamed green hills throughout the east,
And tarried in the west;
I rolled the south ’round in my mouth,
And in the north did rest.

I tasted of the ocean,
And watched the desert bloom;
I dreamed of southern woodlands
As ice hung ’round my room.

I warmed by a maple fire,
Remembered a mesquite tree,
And longed for sandy reaches
But the north had hold of me.

Then in the dead of winter
I struggled up a knoll,
And gazing ever southward
Felt a tugging on my soul.

I left the lakes and woods asleep,
And ran down to the plains,
Free again in the sunny south
To laugh in winter rains.

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