Peace on Casper Mountain

As mentioned in an earlier post, Teaching and Learning, I taught Braille at the Wyoming Lions Summer School for the Visually Impaired on Casper Mountain. I also attended the camp for years as a student. Besides daily living, orientation and mobility, and computers, I took a class in creative writing. Below is a poem I wrote one summer while taking this class. It was inspired by a walk in the woods with a group of other campers.

It was published in Azure and Amber, a collection of poems produced by the International Library of Poetry in 2002. I had a couple of poems published in a couple of anthologies produced by this outfit before I realized that the only way to guarantee publication in one of their books is to buy it for about seventy bucks. Needless to say, I don’t do business with them anymore. Anyway, here’s the poem..

PEACE ON CASPER MOUNTAIN

The woods are silent except for the distant whine of chain saws.

Are they clear-cutting the forest or chopping firewood?

The woods have their usual smells of pine trees and flowers

with green trees, green bushes, green grass.

The gravel road crunches beneath our feet.

As we walk towards camp, the sound of chain saws is stilled.

Moments later, a truck filled with wood passes us.

Has enough of the forest been taken for one day?

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome

http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com

abbie@samobile.net