Below is a poem I ran across while going through old family pictures and photographs. This was on the back of a pencil sketch of my grandmother, as it was dedicated to the artist, Terrence Clark, by his friend, Glenn Berry.
Up Gold Creek Way –
The memories of yesteryear’s
Were pleasantly renewed,
As on a stool and artist sat,
The canvas well imbued
With the image of an ancient tree
Whose cots the ground had strewed.
As a boy I sat there on a bed
Whose roll was lashed up tight,
and kept night herd on the cattle bunched,
As they chewed their cuds all night.
Three score and more are the years that’s fled
Since that tree sheltered me,
but a vigil was kept for all that time
On the bedground round that tree.
Year in, year out, its blossoms come.
Some years to bear no fruit,
But the season never has showed up
Without its glorious debut.
O, Artist, would that your efforts then
Inspire us mortal men
To pass out sagely honest help
To our youth with deeds and pen.
May our hoary heads think twice each time,
And then more humble be
As we teach our young to build our land
And guide its destiny.
