Cool Change

Time stood still and lingered on a thousand trees.

Inspirations fell anew and wild as I reinvented me.

I am always serious; always with some trouble on my mind.

Though I felt the time had come for a cool change that caressed sublime.

So over the hills and through the many woods of Carolina we did gleefully roll.

Across sleeping rivers and smiling streams; to natures dream came we to extol.

There I climbed trees; ate of their leaves and found strange many things in time.

Then...something odd began to take place; poor Leah thought I had lost my mind.

I found myself moved as if by magic to an ancient and far away land.

I fashioned spears from sticks and stones; I stalked lizards through the sand.

I drank swamp water from stagnant streams and slept in the cover of green.

I found myself outside of myself as if captured by a never ending dream.

In the beginning Leah was concerned, yet after a day or two she surrendered to my yearn.

And yet just today when I awoke, I found myself beneath the dark stones of an old river bed.

It was then that I found that my looks had changed; I had sprung new growth upon my head.

Ample hair now covered my once balding pate; had to be the swamp water, or all those lizards I ate.

As you can see from the collection of photographs Leah took.

Wilderness living becomes me and fits me as comfortable as an old glove.

So think as I may, and ponder the fate of the world this day as I might.

Happenstance in these woods of grace has at least for now freed me from the darkest night.

J. Allen Wilson © 5/2008