On old Cape Cod

Chapter 63: The Old Woods Road

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About This Book

A collection of lyrical poems that celebrates and mourns a coastal landscape through images of dunes, marshes, sea, winds, birds, flowers, lighthouses, shipwrecks, and changing seasons. The work blends close natural observation with wistful memory and maritime lore, moving between quiet descriptive pieces and dramatic evocations of storms and loss. Recurring motifs such as salt, sand, driftwood, and light bind domestic scenes and seafaring sketches to themes of transience, rootedness, and the consoling, restorative power of place.

The Old Woods Road

It blunders off through ways obscure

The old woods road I used to tread,

Until its columned walls immure

The sunbeams dripping overhead.

Through scented gloom it seems to wind

O’er fallen branches mossy green,

And leaving all the world behind

Gropes blindly toward a world unseen.

The ancient wheel ruts disappear

With pine and scrub oak overgrown,

No creaking wain for many a year

Has trailed its coverts wild and lone.

“I wonder where that old road goes?”

I hear some blithe young voices say

And I might tell them if I chose

“Back to the land of yesterday.”