This next one challenged me a bit as I used our simple point-and-shoot Nikon to take it. I like the way it turned out, though. Below the picture I composed some lines to describe the scene.
"On a recent trip to the Gettysburg Battlefield our tour bus stopped at a spot known as Little Round Top, a site where some brutal fighting took place. There, beneath the old oak trees acorns lay strewn about. How old those trees were I had no way of knowing, but I imagined the soil where they had taken root to have been soaked with the blood of those many fallen soldiers. I saved these three and keep them in a place of honor."
So it is, here in Mandan. I have another birthday next week to add on my growing total - the 69th. How that came on so fast scares me, so for the time remaining I'd better get moving and accomplish some more tasks. Emily Dickinson penned a poem that pretty well describes the future :
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling on the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
One final aside, someone figured out that you can sing this poem to the tune "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
