riffing on these lines from William Wordsworth’s”Tintern Abbey,” used in a Tweetspeak Poetry prompt:
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
(That’s Wordsworth, composed 1798)
Therefore are we still
Lovers of US Highway 83 South
And the bit near Leakey; and where it plunges
From what we thought was flat; now a flat top
Of hills and valleys,—both steep as the West
And we adjust; well pleased to recognize,
In ebb and the flow of the earth
The topography of our very soul, the geography,
The geology, the aqualogy of our heart, and mind,
Up and down, round and round, over and over and over again.
(That’s me, composed 2017, after a few trips to and from the H.E.B. Foundation camp. That aerial view in the video is what I’m attempting to describe.)