Cottonwood

Many years have passed, many a day gone at length. Since that delta farm and that old pump from which I drank. Its water clear and cool flowing from a spring, gone, are those faded years yet, to the memories, I cling Now, only thoughts of those long fields from the cottonwood tree where I rest, That summer sun on my brow, and on my mind impressed. Here under this old tree this poem I now compose, Lines to that summer sun and to those cotton rows. The old house is gone now, cotton grows where it stood. The only thing that marks the spot, this ragged old cottonwood. I sit here in silence and gaze at the setting sun, I hear over there, a ripple of water, where The Cold Water River runs. A picture of past years now, gone like a morning mist. The ghost of a life that puts my soul at rest. In the mind of this man sitting where a boy once stood, I put my pen to paper under the limbs of the cottonwood. Therefore, let the moon shine over those fields of white, Let the wind blow against my cheeks on this mystic night. Let my dreams take me back to a time when I stood, Gazing over fields of cotton from the shade of the cottonwood.