Watching Our Tiny Dog
On Guard Duty Last Night,
During a Severe Thunderstorm,
Soon Released a Flood of Memories
“The Great Spirit, the Creator,
Flashing light through all the heavens;
The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek,
With his bloody crest erected,
Creeping, looking into the heavens.
“O’er the water floating, flying,
Something in the hazy distance,
Something in the mists of morning,
Loomed and lifted from the water,
Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,
Now, coming nearer, nearer, nearer.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
From The Song of Hiawatha
Cemetery Isle is a real place
It lives on in my mind today
A place where we almost died
A place where we learned to pray
It was my wife’s first wilderness trip
And it could very well have been her last
I often replay that ghastly night in my mind
Then, it moved so slowly, now it moves so fast
It was our very last night in the vast wilderness
Our houseboat was anchored off tiny Cemetery Isle
When that storm from hell quickly descended upon us
When complete and utter terror, quickly stole our smiles
Two gigantic funnel clouds were reported, heading our way
In this wilderness, on this boat, there was now nowhere to run
As my wife, myself, and our tiny dog, huddled under a mattress
I began to believe the three of us would never see the morning sun
Our tiny houseboat was now being pummeled from all sides
The winds began howling, like a million banshees from hell
Thunder and lightning, were booming and flashing all around
The deep dark lake waters, were now churning in deathly swell
As the three of us huddled and held on to each other on the floor
My wife and I soon began praying, harder than we ever had before
Our very lives now depended on five dollar strands of mooring rope
And when all three of them snapped, I felt true terror like none before
I threw that sopping wet mattress off my head, and grabbed some rope
And before I even knew what I was doing, I dove headfirst into that lake
I probably wouldn’t have had the courage, but my wife and dog were inside
Our boat would soon careen into the rocks, and like a matchstick, it would break
By God’s grace, I somehow managed to re-fasten those mooring ropes
And three very terrified voyageurs managed to survive until the next morn
As we slowly chugged back to camp, surveying all the damage all around us
I had a new appreciation for prayer, and my awe of Nature’s Power was re-born
Cemetery Isle is a real place,
It lives on in my mind today;
A place where we almost died,
A place where we learned to pray.
And our extremely tenacious little Chihuahua,
Of the three of us, probably had the least fright;
Every time that we now have bad thunderstorms,
She very diligently guards us all, through the night.
†2010, Mr. Ed
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