Between knolls and homesteads
now abandoned wound a road here, long ago.
No straight way.
Grew up to maple saplings, autumn olive
and multifloral rose. A footpath followed
the old road bed ‘til that too faded.
Nothing remains
these days, but deer
tracks crossing. Small remnants, here
and there, of the old trail, almost invisible
(‘less you're mighty keen). Now
the body knows the way, the twists
and turns, the curve of hill and dip of swale,
the best morel and fiddlehead spots, the dens
where foxes lair and beaver lodge and the winter
yards of deer. Think my guiding's
wizardry? It’s naught but long memory, old age.
Mary Stebbins Taitt
For ES
050415-3V; 1C, 1st
note: I changed the Blog date so that the poem would follow the entry for 4-10-05
5 comments:
Nice poem, Mom. I don't remember seeing it before. Good thing I'm not the "guide." :)
I remember this poem, it always strikes such a familiar chord. I've had the same experience as your "guide" there myself; we ended up literally crawling under/through the brambles at one point. Are the morels up yet?
No. They come out when the oak leaves reach the size of squirrels ears--not quite yet. A little later. Oak leaves are among the later leaves to unfurl.
I esp. like the ending section of this poem, "the body knows the way" part of it, the "yards of deer" image. Myself, I can rely only upon my mind or my own journal to mentally take me to places from the past. If I try to go there in body, I'm hopelessly lost!
I can't offer to guide you into a past where I've never been, but I'd be happy to accompany you into a future that will become a past through which I will then be happy to guide you! :-)
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