The Hermit of
La-Ha-Way
(Written about J. T.
Brakeley)
In the Indian village,
La-ha-way, thru a pathway that's narrow and long -
you will find 'mid the trees and the tangles, the marks of a
man's life that went wrong.
And the people in town tell a story of a young man whose love
went astray
when he caught his betrothed with another, became bitter, and
turned her away.
His father, a preacher, beseeched him. "Stay in town; do not
waste your young years.
Someday you'll forget your hurt feelings, but for now, think
about your career."
But he followed the pines and the cedars; cleared the land, built
a life with his hands.
Thru his work and communing with nature, he found peace of mind
on his lands.
And the world went on turning around him - the world that he felt
let him down.
There were very few people he trusted, and his visits were
seldom, to town.
His habit by evening and morning was retreating to Cock Robin
Hill -
recording the movements of startracks; studied birds and wildlife
at his will.
Studied also bees, wasps, and the weather as his living; he took
as he wished.
Some say the carp he had shipped here, to this day, stock the
streams where he fished.
Now he's gone many years, but remembered as the
poet-who-never-wrote-verse,
for his flowers bloom wild in profusion, but on lands that grow,
year by year, worse.
The gardens are shaggy, uncared for; the berries dried up in the
mire.
His houses, destroyed by the people, carrying off everything
they'd desire.
Yes, intruders; their footsteps still echo as they have now for
many a day -
when in wandering they find the clearing of the Hermit of
La-ha-way.
-Lillian Arnold Lopez "Pineylore"
(coming soon)