To Each, Its Time Poem by James Walter Orr

I stood on the hill-top, and westward I gazed,
Where back in my boy-hood, the antelope grazed.
The prong-horn will graze there no more.
Pastures are covered with Hereford’s white faces;
Trees are all gone now from our secret places:
Naught is as it was once before.

I look to the south where the old dirt road wound,
Through places where arrow-heads then could be found.
Grasses bowed down to the breezes.
The cars on the highway seem so out of place,
Where signs of our passing then left but a trace.
Tears dropp as memory seizes.

I turn to the east, where the line-shack once stood;
Not even a small piece of rotted old wood,
Marks its spot, or that of our pen.
The grass may grow higher where cattle were fed;
More likely a trick that is played in my head,
For nothing can link now to then.

I face the north and the far distant river,
The misty blue hills, and feel my heart quiver:
At my feet, a rusted old stake.
It once secured salt we put out by the block,
And always maintained for the health of our stock:
The twists that our memories take!

I bend down to touch it, like days in the past;
To prove to myself that some things can still last,
Though my life will have passed someday.
It crumbles to dust from the weight of my touch,
The small pile of rust does not signify much:
Now life has been cast a new way.

A radius lain by the line of my sight,
Encircles the lamp that determined my light;
The food that my soul has fed on.
I’m left as the last living link to the past;
The ways of the wild that are fading so fast:
But one day, I too, shall be gone.