My Most Recent Trip To 7-Eleven Poem by Nellie Isabelle Steward Cooper

As I passed the tiny church at the edge of the little valley-village I heard the clock strike one

I followed the inviting road happy, confident,
twas so smooth beneath my riant feet,
warm yet with heat of day,

The long-long miles unrolled in the stillness of a moonstruck nite peace and balm nestled gently close within

I went on and on and on till a faint weariness overtook me, so that I began to stumble, to see the road was no longer smooth.
as it once had been, nor warm, but full of little pebbles.
and sharp rocks, a bitter wind springing up, an ominous scud of clouds drawing across an obscuring moon

But me, I persisted, not stopping, the miles now becoming terrible a drudgery, exacting quite a considerable toll, not to mention the frightful landslides to climb over and around

The gentle rolling hills clothed in muted verdure, the endless fields, cultivated by human, machine and beast now arrayed in magnificent splendor far-far below

Glancing ahead along my journeys path I see great rocks piled, innumerable and strange, creating dreary desolate a landscape, stark, foreboding, formidable

It was through this landscape I traveled with an agonizing void forever aching inside of me

Till at length I paused when the moon once more gave faint agleam to wonder how far I had traveled, thus turning backwards to see how far, but alas I could not see the road, it being swallowed up in shadow

Here for me was utter weariness, moon-ragged clouds, silence, solitude, and so painfully desolate a wind sweeping about my tortured feet

Steadfast, I stood there, arming myself to go on, and on and on, the rocks about me my only companion now

Shivering in the cold biting nite, conscious of the long-long loneliness, of the countless miles I had so sedulously covered

Petrified with amazement and wonder, and filled with frightful dread!

Suddenly I knew!

I was still within sound of the little valley-village, for I heard the clock strike two.....