Home At Last...

Return To The Highlands
By La Belle Rouge


I will return to the high places
damned be this flat insipid landscape
where no hills rise gentle or jagged
to break its bleak monotony

I’ll go back to the highlands
where my people lived before me
Cherokee sages and Celtic settlers

hike through deep pine forests
at one with its woodland creatures
and in a shady hillside orchard
inhale the scent of apples on the trees

revel in the voice of the river
falling ever falling over the rocks
on her long journey to sea

where the dialect is familiar
like wood cooked brunswick stew
and there is no chicken bog
or hopping john to contend with

where ancient oak trees stand tall
against the clear blue horizon
branches unburdened with moss

I will return to air that is crisp
not laden with humid heat vapors
where chimney smoke curls upward
its smell borne on an Autumn breeze

journey back to silent mountaintops
and twinkling stars that seem so close
you could pluck them like buttons
from the black cloak of a midnight sky

stand and sing carols in a deluge
of soft-falling pristine snowflakes
I'll lie down on a white blanket
make snow angels until I’m so cold
it takes a entire afternoon
of mulled cider before the fire to warm

I will return to the high places
when and how I know not yet

but if my eyes never again look down
on the valley of my place of rest
someday my ashes will float down
and away on a wild mountain wind

and I’ll be home...at last



4/14/2008 La Belle Rouge

“Poetry, Soul Whispers”

Music "Winter Peace"