When Left I My Land of Michigan

 A few parting words...

I Walking Song

The woods were green and bright the sun
When left I my land of Michigan
The hay was drying in meadows gold
Beside each ditch and cattail fold
Where flowed the brook and sang the wren
Where bed the deer by a fox’s den,
And patter free at bright midday
The squirrel and hare a crisscrossed way;
Along the road, my song begun,
“Fair was my land of Michigan.”

When left I my land of Michigan
The fauna from the woodland hung
In bordering copse of wooded hill,
The goldenrod on ferny rill
And unfurled Queen Anne’s lace between
Were dancing to the rustling green
Of swaying birch in sunlit air,
The forest portals tall and fair.
The brook was waking underneath
The reeds and cane and lilies’ sheath
And babbling ‘neath a bridge would run
On and on in Michigan.

The gulls were crying o’re Lake Huron;
On whitened shores of Michigan.
The sailor’s winds were on the waves
And tossed the sands on watery caves
Neath’ the Lighthouse on the cove
Where a hundred sailors rove.
But further up where grasses grow
A gentler air does searching go
And on its wings the meadow lark
And two pale butterflies embark
To find a flower or nest up high
Across the road where trotting I
Sing my song beneath the sun
Which lit my fair land of Michigan.

II Nocturne

The sickle moon traversed a sea
Of constellations roaming free.
Here and there a burst of light
In a thousand splinters bearing bright
The warriors of the heavenly dome,
Who running through a cloudy foam,
Had struck each leaf with a silver rod
Born by the terrible hammer of God.
Between the portals of the wood
Betook I my walk in cloak in hood
And found I a clearing, both bright and fair
To offer Christ a silent prayer
“Oh, make the walk a holy one;
For soon I leave my Michigan.”

An owl hooted in the hour
When dark things stir and closed be flower;
A weak twig snapped and fell to ground
And whirled a fox cub from his mound
Then started I in sudden fear
Lest something end my night’s career
But having looked, the trees reclaimed
Their silent, watchful thoughts unnamed,
And I resumed my vespers sung
Not from my land of Michigan,
But holy hymns by Psalmist penned,
Which words through every land do wend.

A northern air came cold and clear
And brought to eye a smarting tear.
The fireflies in cowering dread
Did shrink into a grassy bed
And leaves from a hundred towering heights
Strained towards a million differing flights.
Then, watching the moon sink further down
In ecstasy of mortal brown
I felt a heaven had stirred the turf
Of Michigan, my native earth.