My Secret Place

An old man now I slip and stumble

Down a steep embankment.

I pause briefly to catch my breath

My time held in abatement.

I see then with vision frozen

Kaleidoscope vision of times long passing

Of childhood dreams passing, flashing.

Of children crying of children laughing.

On my galvanized feet a brook is splashing.

Great oak trees rise above me

With acorns heavy on branches bending.

A thousand greens their colors clashing.

Bubbling water with crayfish hiding

Beneath those stones each once familiar.

My rising sun shows streaks vermilion.

This secret place my god has given.

A time machine with endless cycles.

An eternal place without beginning.

A restful place which has no ending.

My secret place of childhood's yearning.


I wrote this in my forties. In my fiftieth year after having a few beers I decided to visit 'My Secret Place'. Huffing and puffing from my sickness I walked the New York Central tracks to this place. Then it was just as I had written it. I stood there in silence and wonder.

On the way back to the Village I picked up two railroad spikes. As thing sometimes happen the spikes at a later time put me into a very strange 'Lord of the Flies' moment. Another story.

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I have a place like that, too. But it is now about 100 miles away from here so I don't get to visit it. I'd also need a boat which I don't have anymore.

that I last went there. It is just a few miles away but I cannot walk that far. In my next life I will go there again.

Perhaps in some magic way you too will visit your Secret Place.

Tell us about your place?
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My family and friends used to go there and we would pretty much have the whole island to ourselves. Nobody else thought of camping on the island. The island isn't overly large. You can walk around it in about a 1/2 hour, but nobody ever did that but me. I explored almost every inch of that island. The river was wider on one side of the island than the other. My favorite place to go when I went on my treks was the upstream point on the narrow side of the river. There were all kinds of dead trees sticking up out of the water from when the island used to be bigger and before they built the locks on the river. The point was mainly sand. I used to go to that side of the point and climb up in a tree and just get lost in the desolation of the place. Nobody else would go there. It was truly haunting and I loved it. Looking at the big river coming at you and all those trees out in the water fighting to stay standing even though they were dead. It was an atmosphere that made me wonder about the big questions in life. It was sort of a foreshadowing of events to come in my life, too. I ended up alone and haunted and wondering about the big questions for a long time. But not in the middle of a powerful river. I was in the middle of family and friends but in my mind I might as well had been on the point of that island.

I'm not so much haunted now except by past events. And I am now in the here and now thanks to a head doctor.

(both of you)

I am 71 this month. When I wrote that fifty was old. Now it is young.

Thanks for comment superconnected

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