The Wild Song

14 line poem composed as part of his eleven o'clock poems as an adult

Earth and forest have held me willing captive this long arrested time,

For bird note and ancient tree are the verse to which I am in rhyme.

Long have I idled among the music of the communal woodland way,

Each trail I have walked has been no effort of physical assay.

But rather those paths have been as immersion in water intense,

Where leaving the shore of barren man and limits of social sense,

I wade into the self of the earth, at touch with the Wild's wild song,

That replete in symmetry of leaf, pattern of tree, and cycle year long,

Is artistry in endless purvey and creativity at once the mainstay base,

Of Nature which is Earth Artist, Land Sculptor and Creator of Life Race. 

No trails such as these seem among Man, a destroyer and finite cheat,

Whose spirit in soul retreat created a social scene for retreat complete,

So, shall I arrive in the forest then and finally end my social's stay?

Union beckons, an Oceanos of Nature calls and I must be on my earthly way. 

Raymond Lee Collins

Swallow Camp (nickname for house he was living in) 

August 18, 1991

Midnight Hours

copyright reserved by the publisher

Carol A Wells

Author's Note

one of 17 poems in a collection author called Eleven O'Clock (pm) Inspirations