Shenandoah Valley

Shenandoah Valley is one of the most beautiful and tranquil places on earth. Just stand a top a stone wall and look out over the valley.

Shenandoah

I stand a top of Stony Man
And gaze down upon my father’s land
Miles of green where twisted river runs
A top of trees and the blazing sun
I close my eyes to imagine a time before
When a different species roamed the lore
And the plains that embraced a heritage more
Same river, same green, same trees and blaze
But a different sound would carry up to the twilight haze
So now I stand captured in time
A part of this history, apart of my line
Smelling the fires to blacken the land
And gazing up the mountain so grand
I watch many climb the broadened hill
Up along the rocky and towards Hawk’s Bill
Young men, brave and strong with bow in hand
Hoping to steal a mighty beast from the vast land
But I myself have a different view
I climb the rock and sit upon a crescent pew
To gaze along fields of labor and toil
To gaze among the citizens of my father’s spoil
Braids and feathers flow through the air
Songs of white tails, wing-ed beast and bear
And still I sit and gaze and smell the freshened sky
Filled with the scent of blooms that past way by
And wander along the top of this mount
To Dark Hallow and swim in its fount
And on again I gaze and conceive
Of this mighty mass cloaked in its winter freeze
Oh yes, a magic befalls
The foggy walk along the Hallow falls
A daughter of the stars and of the night
A mystical land scaped in my second sight
A graze of peace
A graze of love
A graze of nation red
A mount so high
Full of history and full of lives
Never a care, never a lonely cry
For all would trust the Spirit in the sky
Now those centuries have past and with it, change
Of progress, of fleeting and of the strange
No more braided and no more brave
And all is quiet from songs of yesterday
But yet I still gaze and dream upon Stony Man
Eyes are open, but still I see that land
Of my once upon a time and long ago
And of my bloodline past, a place called Shenandoah

Michelle Elizabeth Rogers 10/08/2009