Hudson River Valley
A poem by Jerome
Into the fog……can you see?
Great blue herons lurch into it,
geese in rows float through it.
A lone sentinel marks the channel
where depth and shallow
are obscured…..
Can you see?
The island lighthouse in the mist,
the ethereal transit between,
And along the way, marking the passing
of ships, night and day.
Bald eagle eyes see through the cold…..
Present, waiting, patient to the talons’ longing.
The fog lifting, the mountains sunning.
Into the fog again……Can I see?
Only the faintest of outlines
mark the Way.
I can see, now……not now.
Lone heron stands still,
silent to the strike.
Egrets, white stands in a mass of green.
I can see now!
The sun lights the Way, pointing nowhere,
can’t you see? Where? Not that, not that!
There, the bridge is strung
the passing enabled, but
I’m not ready, and yet I know the way
into the fog……..yes, that. I am
the journey man, the training man, the pilgrim
searching for the channel, the light, the way, the strike.
Are we but water flowing through the defined,
unaware that we are the way
in a flow……..can you feel that?
Cradled, guided, yielding to the inexorable
defining pull of all that preceded,
And to the push from all that longs for the pull
Into the fog, and out again.
