Hundred Waters Follow

There's a pleasant port where a boy fixed his course
On a lesser-trodden landscape north
And on his journey boreal met one corporeal
One returning journey forth

"What draws you to the barren there", he said
"That land is nothing but dampen dread
And sour berries, and rotten cherries
And icy rime and that snowy, snowy pine
That bleak, bare lawn is woebegone
But carry, carry, carry on"

"Oh no", he said "You must have misunderstood,
It's not the land's comestible goods
Not the berry that I seek
But the way it hangs on the arrow wood

And I am not after that snowy shawl
But the way the faint flakes float and fall
And to me that alabaster milky rime
Is as sweet as sugar and just as fine

And I don't care one bit that the pines are gone
But I do care what they look like at dawn
I'm not concerned that their life is drawn
But what happens to the land without their brawn"

And so his journey goes, though his story's old
But a tale is not trite if it's still being told.