Escape ©
by Jenne Brown
It’s been too long a winter, too long bleak.
Memories of sun and green grown weak.
In shadows the sun has lurked,
For longer than my mind can search.
Too cold and blustery to venture outside,
I spend an endless winter locked inside.
March comes with slight relent
As winter’s cold and wind diminish.
I drive and drive to find a place
Where I can escape
Marching rows of man’s geometric shape,
That forget the restful curve of nature’s face.
At last I turn and stretch the eye
To find not a box in sight.
I see the bough’s slender sweep,
Carrying only the tender leaves;
The tracks of a deer and her doe,
A crystal palace where the dew froze.
All the entertainment I need
Skipping a rock across a snowy, icy sheet;
Hearing the eerie echoes as it proceeds
Past different depths of frozen deep;
To feel the wind beat across the lake
To make war upon my face.
To taste the wild, unfiltered air,
Unprocessed, untainted, naked and bare.
Peeking through trees to find trails
Made not by man, nor to man’s avail.
The only sound to contend a bird’s song
Is the rustle of the breeze as it moves along.
I must return at last
To the lot and car of two hours past
Where the lines don’t feel so hard,
Nor the road to return so far.
I find a peace
Absent all the week
As I drove
Along roads
Of concrete and cement;
Old roads, beaten and bent.
Now I find the melody of a bard
In the hum and rattle of my aging car.
And after the western sky has dimmed into night,
I discover a dance of flickering lights.
A twinkle, a glare, an odd little flight –
Yesterday, nothing more than city lights.
When God went to create,
He curved so many lines that were straight,
Not crooked, nor twisted, nor bent,
But an easing, a giving, a relent.
Lines not lacking direction
Yet pushing the eye to deeper reflection.
And escape must be found
From the finite works man has bound
Upon the features of a landscape
Sculpted and shaped.
The architect ought set his plan
With remembrance of the Creator’s hand.
Lay the lines amidst the work of the divine,
To recall the grace that has allowed us this space.
