Soon the long dark hall will once again
be my nightly company. The clock,
hung on the wall above the night staff desk,
will tick away all memory of a quest
that took me out beyond the great divide,
beyond the piebald plains, the rolling lakes,
to where low mountains undulate with elms
beneath a broad and ever changing sky.
Soon I'll fight to recollect the reason
I ventured out so far away from home,
camping out beside the stillest waters
I've ever known, and underneath the shade
of canopies exotic to my eyes,
where all night long the air was filled with song
so thick, so alien, so magical,
that waking life took on the hues of dream.
Soon I'll wonder as I check dim rooms
if I imagined mysteries of light
that rose above serene Wisconsin waters,
or flashed beneath abrupt Ohio clouds,
or hovered through a Pennsylvania dusk,
or streaked across an Adirondack night,
each meteor ephemeral as mists
evaporating in the morning sun.
Soon I'll watch adventure drift from mind,
cast upon the seas of daily life,
the billowed sail that held that wild wind
shrinking in the distance from my sight.
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