Colchester Country

 Follow me down a country road to my sister’s house

where the wild birds gather in spring

juncos on the lawn, titmice in the trees

downy woodpeckers drumming

red-bellied woodpeckers drumming,

and in the backyard and what do I see?

A red-shouldered hawk peering down at me

I go to the door, sister come see

but the red-shouldered hawk

flew away from me.

So we sat and had tea

in Colchester Country.

 High overhead the trees are in bloom

spring is coming,

soon! soon!

In the woods the old barn patiently waits

it’ll soon disappear behind a curtain of green

in Colchester Country.

 So I take a walk down an old country road,

 past the old farm fields golden and quiet,

 past the old farm with its stories to tell,

whispering softly over the fields,

 and as the day wanes the moonrises slowly

making a moonpath on the still pond

a mallard glides in and follows the trail

into the marsh grasses and then it is gone,

in Colchester Country.

I stop by the graveyard to say Hi to my grandpa,

I watch birds at the feeder by Grandpa’s old barn

where he kept his boat for his trips to Maine,

to Moosehead Lake

the place that he loved best,

the place where he left us before coming to rest

in the old graveyard

in Colchester Country.

 Then out and about I watch wild turkeys run

at dusk they feed and flee to the woods

where they bed for the night in safety,

 and on the next day in my travels around

Colchester Country I find the sweet killdeer on the pond’s shore

First one, then a pair in the cool air,

In Colchester Country the place of my roots,

Like an old oak tree, there’s still a farm girl in me,

and I find her again in Colchester Country.

~Kathie Adams Brown 3-15-12