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There’s a lordly swathe of meadow running up from Cherry Lake,
Where the bony High Sierras soar and strive,
And the crazy-banked Tuolumne squirms Westward like a snake
And winter-wards the snowfalls blindly drive:
To that far, redeeming country of the redwood and the roe
Where skies are clear as heaven’s edgeless fane,
When the shades of death shall beckon, that’s the place I want to go,
And it’s there I’ll drag my body and remain.

I will blow along the Merced that the leaves of Fall shall frame –
I will drift across the Bridal-Veil like spray,
I will glow like windborne timber that the lightning sets aflame
And I’ll float with falcons circling for their prey.
No modicum shall bar me as my ashes swirl and plume,
No clutching branches halt me in my flight,
In the vastness of my mountains there’ll be joyous, endless room,
As with wings of fire I leap across the night.

Yosemite shall claim me – every part of me her own –
From Buckeye Pass to Mariposa Grove,
My dust shall green the valley-floor, be bone of mountain’s bone,
Enshrouded in those colours that I love:
The winds of the millennia must sing my travelling-song,
No matter what the shape or shade I take –
And so I’ll sing Tuolumne, my heart’s home right or wrong,
Till the backbone of the turning world shall break!

© Colin Bailey, April 2009