Ithaca Is Gorges

That's a bumper sticker.  You see it all over Western New York.  "Ithaca Is Gorges".  It is a beautiful part of the state:  A small college town at the southern tip of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes area of central New York.  

I was working night shifts in Ithaca for the past week.  Reporting for work at 9pm, I saw some very beautiful sunset skys around 8:45 pm.  By 5am the first hint of the Earth revolving was an ever-so-faint blue sky crawling over the hills from the east.  On the face of those hills sits Cornell University, still dark and sleeping.  Leaving the parking lot at 6am yesterday, I snapped a few photos with my cell phone of the streaking sunlight shooting over those same hills.  Sunrise in this town of fewer than 30,000 people is quite stunning, cheesy bumper stickers notwithstanding! 

Rick Baker 

Rochester, NY 

July 12, 2009

night broken 

still night 

broken by 

glorious color 

lightrays 

streak behind 

sleeping mountains. 

who, but me, 

has witnessed 

morning's debut? 

Poem © 2009 by R. Burnett Baker 

Photo © 2009 by R. Burnett Baker 

Photo taken by R. Baker, July 11, 2009 in Ithaca, NY.