Sunday, April 10, 2005

Almost Invisible (the guide replies)



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 5-11-02
note: I changed the Blog date so that the poem would follow the entry for 4-10-05

5 comments:

a/k/a Nadine said...

Nice poem, Mom. I don't remember seeing it before. Good thing I'm not the "guide." :)

Anonymous said...

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?

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

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! :-)