A Poem From the Professor’s Journal

 A Song for Austria

Lynda McKinney Lambert

The Poem

A Song for Austria

Can you sing for me a song for Austria?

Sing about papal treasures

and jewels in the golden monstranz

inside the Salzburg Cathedral.

I remember  the sounds

of  bombs dropping

and fires that blazed

when this  building was destroyed.

Take me on ancient paths

that Celts and Romans used to walk.

Let me see signs along the way

and taste salt inside the mountain.

Can you sing about golden angels

carved in wooden altars?

or goats on the Alpine hills?

and horses that pull the wagons?

I desire to listen to the waters of Mondsee

as I watch sailboats on the lake

and the silence of the absent souls

that rises from ancient bones in Halstatt.

I will lay back my head and watch the mountaintops

as you sing of distant roads

that meander through lush green hills

as we turn to begin the long ride home.

©Lynda McKinney Lambert, 2022. All rights reserved.

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The Backstory

I wrote this poem from writings in my travel journal. Austria, 1998.

This was the first summer that I took students from Geneva College for a travel/study course, Drawing and Writing in Salzburg.

I combined elements of places, people, landscape and memory. Life happens in layers of imagery. It is multi-layered. I sense the passing of time and the vast history that left fragments behind over the centuries. I distill  these thoughts in my poetry.

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Published:

First published in Four Pennsylvania Poets, a chapbook created with my three poetry friends. We met monthly for approximately eighteen years. We celebrated birthdays and holidays together at our meetings and we read our work and had conversations about what we were doing in our writing.

Ida (Danae) Barton, Beaver County Poet Laureate.

Jean Cooper, wrote special topic articles for a local newspaper.

June Molohon Kerstetter, earned degrees in Fine Art and Journalism.

Lynda McKinney Lambert, Professor of fine arts and humanities.

I am the surviving  member of this group.

Additional Publications:

A Song of Austria, poem

_Four Pennsylvania Poets, Barton, Cooper, Kerstetter, Lambert. Chapbook.

_Lambert, Lynda. Concerti: Psalms for the Pilgrimage. Kota Press.  2002.

_Lambert, Lynda McKinney. Songs for the Pilgrimage, 2021.

_Lambert, Lynda McKinney.  Walking by Inner Vision Blog, November 21, 2022.

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Read more in my NEW BOOK!

BREAKING NEWS

this book is currently in production at Perkins Library, for distribution  through the library and through NLS (BARD).

COMING SOON

MY NEW book is a thoughtful and joyous collection  of my poetry, stories, memoirs, photography, and reflections from 1985 – 2021.

Songs for the Pilgrimage

Order the book for Christmas Gifts –

©Lynda McKinney Lambert, 2022. All rights reserved.