Robert Nicholas

Shaker Lane - Poems Beneath My Feet Robert Nicholas

One last look out my window pane and looking back was Shaker Lane

The poems in this collection are woven into a unified story, an odyssey. It has a magical, inspirational feel to it - a range from joy to sorrow. It is an adult myth - a novel told in verse.

My boyhood home on Shaker Lane in western Massachusetts was a converted saw mill associated with the Shaker religious community. This one-lane unpaved road was surfaced in stone over a dirt base.

I treat the lane as a living entity, with senses, feelings, memories and a 'voice'- a friend - which it was for me as a boy. Does the lane actually converse with me? Am I only hearing other people speak, and believe it to be the lane? What power does the pebble I find there hold over me? What does the old woman in the green-shingled house know? What mystery awaits me when I finally reach the end of Shaker Lane?

Surrender yourself to the lure. Explore all the joy and magic that a young boy can discover along the way. Come with me and listen closely as we walk Shaker Lane, the friend beneath my feet.

And tho I watch them flicker every damp summer's eve, I always let the fireflies fly free