The Green Trail has an old wooden bridge crossing the creek flowing to the Matanzas River. There is a small island, a salt marsh, that the bridge connects to the mainland. Along the trail were rustic benches surrounded by palms and oak trees with limbs hanging heavily with thick Spanish moss.
The Bridge Builder
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and
gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and
wide.
Through which was flowing a
sullen tide
The old man crossed in the
twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear
for him;
But he turned when safe on the
other side
And built a bridge to span the
tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow
pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength
with building here;
Your journey will end with the
ending day,
You never again will pass this
way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep
and wide,
Why build this bridge at
evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old
gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I
have come,” he said,
“There followed after me
to-day
A youth whose feet must pass
this way.
This chasm that has been as
naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may
a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the
twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building
this bridge for him!”
Source: Father: An Anthology of Verse (EP Dutton & Company, 1931)
Will Allen Dromgoole was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A prolific author who wrote novels, plays, and more than 8,000 poems, she was the author of the best-selling novel The Island of the Beautiful (1911).
