Rich men strive so industrious
to dig up treasures from the ground,
then build mansions illustrious
on the nicest land they’ve found.
Timid animals choose holes to rest;
lions, elephants simply roam.
Birds like men need to nest,
yet times fly far from home.
Her I am between extremes,
as once a rapist of the soil,
while lover of fields and streams,
while I, like you, still roll and roil.
Some animals climb up a tree.
As a rule, little boys do too.
None perhaps more so than me;
you see, I need a higher view.
Little boys need to run and climb
till they can climb and run no more.
But I go faster in age and time
in my macho four-by-four.
I drive to deserts, cities walls to flee,
to simply note nothing much at all.
I scan the horizon just to see
organ pipes blaring up so tall.
Along the coast, naught else but sand,
or perhaps I spy a rocky shoal
where the sea battles against the land,
but to see, I see the needed goal.
Long winter blues will give me SAD
when too old to sled the slope and play.
I need not a lamp to make me glad
but a warm spring sunny day.
Exercise makes me ache in my old age,
but my eyes have not failed this wretch.
I drive up high to a mountain ledge
so muscles in my eyes can stretch!
-Robert Michael Middleton
Fortunately I have at last retired from technical writing in windowless offices at three universities. I now write novels, poems, songs, and plays. Is it coincidence that I always include panoramas of God’s beauty in my writings? Seemingly unrelated, I am claustrophobic; from time to time, I must “stretch my eyes.” But until I wrote this poem for Tiny Seed, I had not realized how much my need for stretching my eyes across vast expanses of bright, unspoiled terrain has affected my writing style to always portray a sunny outlook, as demonstrated in my website. Thanks, Tiny Seed! rmmiddleton.com