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Contests : Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2009 : Highly Commended
THE NATURE TRAIL
When I am a lad about the age of ten,
my mother takes my older sister and me
to visit a park to which we've never been.
"It'll be fun. You'll love it. Just wait and see."
The place is fantastic! It has a lake, a swimming pool,
even horseback riding, and, for old folks, a nature trail.
After lunch, Mom insists we do the trail. Like a fool,
I argue that I don't want to waste my time...to no avail.
We join a tour, guided by an older girl of college
age. There is this flower, that flower, and look...a tree.
So boring! I should be swimming. Then we come to a ledge,
a place where the path narrows to five feet across maybe,
with a sheer wall of rock on the left. The ground steeply drops
down about eight feet to a shallow, rocky creek on the right.
The guide is leading, until beside some old bush she stops,
lifting a branch to show something or other. The sight
of a seven-foot-long coachwhip snake lying at her feet
causes her to scream and run. She must be a track star!
The poor, harmless snake is startled out of its sleep
and takes off "running" also, catching up before very far.
Looking down, seeing the snake along side, she accelerates.
So does the snake. Still neck and neck upon their coming
to a fork at the end of the narrow ledge, neither hesitates,
the snake going left, the guide right, with both continuing
to run until clear out of sight. Our small group still stands
in shocked surprise. Then laughter erupts. As we start to
continue along the path, another park guide, this one a man,
comes galloping over from the horseback-riding trail to do
what he can to assist. When he asks what has happened here,
my sister lifts the bush's branch to explain. Out comes
a second coachwhip, startling the horse to see a snake so near.
He rears. The guide falls over backward, begins doing some
somersaults down the incline, before splashing face down
in the creek, letting out some curse words I had thought only
old sailors knew. It was great! Thus went the day that I found
out Mother was right about how much fun nature trails could be.
This poem won a Highly Commended award in the 2009 Tom
Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Harry E. Gilleland, Jr. received a $100 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Harry E. Gilleland, Jr.
Harry E. Gilleland, Jr. is a 64-year-old southerner. Born and raised in
Macon, Georgia, he earned a B.S. (1966) and a M.S. (1968) in Microbiology from
the University of Georgia in Athens. Following three years of service in the
U.S. Army as a captain, including a tour of duty in Vietnam, he returned to
earn a Ph.D. in Microbiology from UGA in 1973. He then headed north to
complete a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Western
Ontario in London, Canada. In July of 1975 he joined the faculty of the
Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Louisiana State University Health
Sciences Center in Shreveport, Louisiana. After twenty-nine years of teaching
microbiology to medical and graduate students and performing vaccine research,
Harry retired in July of 2004. Today Harry lives in Shreveport with his
wonderful wife Linda and their Corgi, Rusty. Harry enjoys being able to engage
in his passion for writing full-time.
Harry has previously published three books of his personal
poetry: Poetry For The Common Man: Storoems and Poems (2003, ISBN 1411600649),
Gilleland Poetry: Storoems and Poems (2005, ISBN 1411629272), and Poetic
Musings of an Old, Fat Man (2008, ISBN 978-1-4357-1242-3). In addition, Harry
has published two books of prose, a tale of fantasy entitled Bob the Dragon
Slayer (2005, ISBN 1411633156) and a contemporary romance story entitled White Lightning Road (2006, ISBN 978-1-4116-8693-9).
Harry Gilleland's poetry has been included in four multi-author print
anthologies of poems and short stories, in several poetry e-zines, and on
numerous Internet poetry forums, in addition to his own three published
collections. His poetry is readily accessible to all readers, including those
who do not regularly read poetry. His storoems (story-poems) and poems address
a variety of topics, from everyday life events, observations of Nature, tales
of fantasy, expressions of love, and more. Harry views the world with a poet's
eye.
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