After a picnic lunch on an overlook, we took a short hike down an old mountain road to a confluence of streams. The road descended gently and paralleled a small brook on the right and a larger stream on the left. We passed the site of an old Episcopal mission. There were no real remains of the place except some evidence of a stone wall that used to line the path.
At the bottom of the trail we crossed a bridge where the brook and stream joined a third stream. A tree there had a small heart shape in its trunk, and it reminded me of Emily Dickinson's poem, "Have you got a Brook in your little heart" (below on the left). Of course, in this case, the little brook had the humble heart (below on the right).
Have you got a Brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so-- And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there, And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there-- Why, look out for the little brook in March, When the rivers overflow, And the snows come hurrying from the fills, And the bridges often go-- And later, in August it may be-- When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life, Some burning noon go dry! |
| |