worn by feet neither mine nor yours
through blown and bending grasses.
I did not sow, cut sod or furrow, I founded
no place for stem and stick to seek forgiveness
or come straight and rising with the light.
Migrant seeds fell to the ground at random
and chose the accidental soil for their roots
to slip beneath and drink the vagabond rain.
And I was never woodsman enough to know
which tree would reach the sky and which
carried only weakness for the wind to find.
What I had learned of bark and wood,
the stirring of leaf and air, of bird or badger,
and the barking deer at dusk
none of it joined me to the underbelly of trees,
greened me like the forest growing old, nor ever
did it make a woodsman out of me.
© BH, 2022
Wrote this after reading Wendell Berry's The Peace of Wild Things. His roots in the naturalistic world is compelling but filled with hard nuggets of truth about ourselves at the same time. I loved the connection he has with his place in the wild and in the cultivated swathes of it he tends. I guess I was channeling that as I put this together.
It's a memory of a regular track through our own nearby woodland where we have made our own trail through the pines and the hemlocks. From what lies scattered there, it's clear that the way is made by deer and badger. It's a shared enterprise. Nothing made by grand design, a collaboration. This is how we help each other. Without even trying. Without realising…
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