This is Throwback Thursday #245.  In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general.  If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com.  Thanks!

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Today, we have a winter poem by Bill Allaway, an ESCONI founder and the first Chairman of ESCONI.  He wrote quite a few poems for the newsletter over the years.  We’ve published many of them.  His daughter Peggy inherited his talents as she was poeta laureate at the University of Illinois in the early 1950s.

WONDERLAND

Deep in a sunlit valley
Flows a river broad and green,
And on its banks
Mid serried ranks
Lives the Forest’s virgin queen.

The tall and stately Sycamore
Survives the passing years.
While men below
Stride to and fro
Chained down by doubts and fears.

The trees and rocks along the trail
Are covered with Fairie’s lace,
They work at night
When the moon is brite
In the morn there is no trace.

Along the shaded pathway
You’ll feel a sudden chill,
Come swirling round
From underground
Beneath the rocky hill.

The great cave yawns before you
With dark forbidding face,
The die is cast
You step at last
Into the stygian space.

Decending into darkness.
The feeble lanterns burn,
Like fire-flies
With glowing eyes
Around each rocky turn.

Thru dark and aged labyrinth
Far down beneath the ground,
Where linestone gleams
In craggy seams
And silence is profound.

Where giant rooms spread out
In spacious majesty,
Whose lofty domes
Inspire poems
To tell of things they see.

Thru passage dark and dank
Which ne’er has lite of day,
On rivers brim
Where blind fish swin
You’ll slowly wind your way.

The ancient Mississippi Seas
Laid down its sediment,
The rain end time
Worked on the lime
To form this mighty vent.

At the end of the winding trail
Comes the final show at last,
Stone waterfall.
On frescoed wall
A relic of the past.

Mid a maze of spires and columns
Of onyx and travertine,
You’ll find your way
To the lite of day
Silenced by things you’ve seen.

This story has no ending
With endless things to see,
And soon ’twill seen
Just like a dream
With no reality.

When winter winds ere blowing
And summer’s far away,
To caverns deep
Where stalactites weep
Your memories will stray.

– Bill Allaway