It’s a tradition at our annual Thanksgiving Day dinner to share a little talent with our fellow hikers. I hereby bring you a poem I wrote – and I don’t write them often – commemorating the hike and our friends who’ve gone before us.
Okeechobee
Mi-yam-i of the Calusa
Pay-hay-okee of the Seminole
Big Water
Big sky
Hikers strolling by
Okeechobee
Mournful whistle of the train
Rattle of the sandhill crane
Crackle
Snap
Burning sugar cane
Okeechobee
First rays of the rising sun
Pop pop pop of hunter’s gun
Tales thrice told
And then
Respun
Okeechobee
Mule path on an ancient ridge
Dike worker cabins at Taylor Creek Bridge
Ghosts of those
Who worked and lived
Okeechobee
We walk with Steve
And Sunny too
Connie, we can’t keep up with you
What’s that pain
Inside my shoe?
Okeechobee
Step by step
We walk the dike
Watch the morning born from night
As we talk
Our memories light
Okeechobee.