Poetry Page

Benedicto:  

May your trails be crooked,
	winding, lonesome,
dangerous, leading to the most amazing	
	view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys
	tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets’ towers
into a dark primeval forest where tigers
	belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
	and down into a desert of red rock,
blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and
	grottos of endless stone,
and down again into a deep vast ancient
	unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled
	cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand
	beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than your deepest
dreams
waits for you –
 beyond the next turning of the canyon walls.

Edward Abbey