Go if you will, in your season’s choice
Seek out this old bridge of the past
Stand in its beauty, lend it your voice
Forever, its echo will last.
Go if you will, when harsh winds blow
And winter has tightened its vise
When hemlock and oak are bent with the snow
And streams wear a necklace of ice.
Or wait ‘til spring, with its brush in hand,
Steals quietly in, unseen
And robes with a splash the naked land
In a flimsy coat of green.
Go if you will, when the sun’s agleam
At the peak of a summer day
Is sprinkling diamonds down on a stream
That leaps on its turbulent way.
Or go when the mud nests, twigged and mossed,
That once shared the song of the Thrush
Molder away in late autumn frost
In the snarl of the underbrush.
Stand by the arch, at the tip of its base
With fingertips touching the stone.
Lean in a bit when the wind starts to race;
You’ll soon find you’re not there alone.
For out of the breach that coddles the flow
And cradles the wind in its seams
Come the voices of yore, in whispers low
Beseeching kind answers to dreams.
Acknowledge their presence, lend them an ear
Then request, they remember your name.
Others who hear it, in some distant year,
Will repeat it, and then do the same.
And on it will go, through life’s endless spree
So don’t wait ‘til your step is too slow.
Find it my friend, and I’m sure you will see
You’ll be glad that I told you ‘To Go’.
–Francis J. Ryan
