Travelling Standing Still/There Was a Time

by Genevieve Taggard

TRAVELLING

STANDING STILL

THERE WAS A TIME

There was a time when Mother Nature madeMy soul's sun, and my soul's shade.

A cloud in the sky could take awayThe song in my heart for all day,

And a little lark in a willow-treeWould mean happiness to me.

My moods would mirror all her whims;Trees were my strength: their limbs, my limbs,

But, oh, my mother tortured me,Blowing with wind, and sighing with sea.

I flamed, I withered, I blossomed, I sang,With her I suffered pang for pang,

Until I said: "I will grow my own treeWhere no natural wind will bother me."

And I grew me a willow of my own heart's strength,With my will for its width, and my wish for its length:

And I made me a bird of my own heart's fire,To sing my own sun, and my own desire.

And a vast white circle came in the air,And the winds around said, "Don't blow there."

I said, "Blow on—blow, blow, blow, blow,Fill all the sky, above, below,With tempest, and sleet, and silence, and snow!

"Wherever I go, no matter where,My bird and my willow-tree are there.

"However you frown, no matter how,I will sing as I am singing now."