Verse 26: Day 26: Minnewaska

Today's Verse Love Host, Clayton (Boxer) Moon, asks us to consider home. It’s where we’re from, where we belong. He asks us to show this favorite place and then, use line breaks and to create a poem. After a nomadic life, I did live in a home on top of a mountain where my children grew up and there were happy times; yet, the when I go back there now, painful memories overpower any sense of home. 

Yet, there is a place of sanctuary where I have always felt secure and as if I belong. As I look back now, I am not sure how I braved those hikes with little children and their their mountain bikes, but we talked about the very real dangers that come with very magical memories. Perhaps I really do have my roots in Minnewaska, now a state park in NY.

That first hairpin turn out of New Paltz 

A clue of the breathtaking wonder ahead,

The road weaves, clouds envelope you,

Before you set foot or brave mountain

Bikes towards High Peters Kill 

In search of Castle Point, slowing for

Deer, strange tracks, left over ice, 

Dangling markers, higher and higher, 

Switchback where rocks dangle, respecting

That view stretching to the skies where

Prayers are a hop, skip, jump away.

Before descending, respectfully, 

Searching for Awosting Falls in the

Distance before skinny dipping, perhaps,

In frigid Lake Awosting or head to

Gertrude's Nose or Millbrook Mountain

Breathing deeply, making memories, 

Respecting the power of that glacier 

To leave a path to heaven.