I was moving some of my late mum's boxes (mostly filled with her genealogy papers) around, when I saw what looked like an old notebook page with my handwriting on it....I opened it up, and it was a faded poem I'd written--God only knows when. I don't ever remember writing it, tho' it is in my handwriting, and sounds like something I might have written in my youth.

It was stuck behind some papers in a folder. The date on the folder was 1982, but the poem looks much older than that--besides, I'd pretty much stopped writing poetry around my late teens--say 18 or 19 or so, and didn't start again until about ten years later. I'm guessing I may have written this around '76 or '77, as that was when I was first truly getting into the whole John Denver fan-girl, trancendentalist, tree-hugger thing.

The ink is faded and the paper waterstained (possible from a leak in the roof or cellar?) and it's hard to read some of it, but here's what I wrote---mind you, fair warning here, it's pretty horrid. Well, I think it is--tho' mum must have liked it, I suppose.

PS, I added the punctuation, but otherwise am posting it as written.

(UNTITLED)

As the snow falls down,
Down, down, down
On the forest and the town,
And, somewhere in the night, a train rumbles by,
I long to be under the swaying pines, singing.

To run with the river,
To soar with the hawk and fly with the wind,
To dance with the sun,
To call the earth a friend, and
Be one with all of them.

What lies beyond the stars,
Is our last great mystery,
What lies in the hearts of nature and ourselves,
Is there for us alone to find.