Omega Path
Trailhead
Welcomed by ticks and poison ivy,
maybe nettles,
and tree of heaven? or sumac?
I sense Pennsylvania’s gone out of me.
There’s nowhere I’m native now,
but the yellow-green arching sea waves me in.
1 and 2
The path starts rocky:
a wall coming down,
boundary changed to course.
Then I’m at 2,
missing the first pause -
off to a subpar start
like most endeavors.
This pine with spokes,
wagon wheel whorls wrapping thick trunk -
she’s never seen stop one either.
3 and 4
No 3.
Guess I’m on an even path.
On the way I find a memory.
A mittened palm halts me
and my tongue goes wild.
I chew that petiole to pulp,
green turkey foot dangling
from the corner of my mouth,
a kid with a taste for sassafras again.
Sweet, woodsy, spicy,
a bit like that old-fashioned Teaberry gum
in the quaint wallpaper-pink wrapper.
Here stone rims a dry vernal pool;
hems in more green than shade.
5
A sign less obvious than what it signifies -
a rich subject:
perfect pileated ovals dripping dried sap
and a lean-to that gives no shelter
(unless you’re 10)
capped by a natural tented flag.
I whack the tree
just for my son’s sake.
Nobody answers,
just like always.
6
I only find this one on the map:
shortcut to a nap
or “steep climb.”
A tick runs over my pack.
Twice.
Not enough to dissuade.
7
So much forgetting in 25 arid years.
How a tree can hold
a hollow jug at its base,
an old trunk cleaved
til a wet vessel remains.
How in these hills
sky’s a tease.
You never get to ridgeline.
The blue beckons
but the land just rolls.
8
A lace of leafy celadon lichened limbs
might make a poet pop out
of even the most hardnosed
nonfiction truth-teller.
9
Don’t do this:
follow the sun west
to the clearing I claimed wasn’t there -
a surprising boon
from the high-tension wires.
Don’t sit on the knoll
listening to an ascending stair-step trill
from a bird you’ve never known.
If you come later,
don’t palm the raspberries
or stroke the straight-up ferns
anchored in sideways rock.
Don’t wait for the hillside to go gold -
you can already see the red in the maple.
If there’s a crackle in the line
it’s lost in cricket and wind.
Stay on the safe, tracked path instead.
10
A clear mahogany trace
outlines a life lost.
The dry light leavings of the heart-
-wood fracture to faults
punched by borings.
Behind me
the low creak
of a dead trunk
easing his load
slowly to earth.
Now singing a final song:
sometimes high like a wail
or rough like a croak
or arcing like coyote.
He’s singing us all
the forest lullabies
he ever heard,
learning what it takes to leave
his own rust track behind.
11
Crows announce 11
or maybe an owl they’re mobbing.
The whole field of stippled light sways.
I flip a fern frond searching for sori -
the currency of backwoods secrets.
12
Nuthatches spiral up around
Until I’m backbended down
trying to keep up
with their diligent beeping.
Easterners don’t know
what pleasure canopy brings:
ready shade right there
and moss at your feet.
Westerners must work
to get relief from glare.
We climb on up
into the tinder-dry spruce-fir,
straight up like matches,
casting as little cool as possible.
Even the amiable aspen
hang their leaves down -
more pendant than parasol.
But, curiously, here
in the flickering diffuse light
an ovenbird bakes.
13
An old cairn of shale
like steep-walled Walnut Creek
and the blue-grey bed
I waded in.
These rocks lined our foyer floor,
locked in a glossy layer of wax
that never felt natural,
and broke whatever landed.
But at the creek we pounded them to clay,
left mud pots to cure in sun.
14
Feathery hemlock,
near prostrate,
felled by one
weak limb.
Too tall and skinny
for its own good.
It will never wear
the skirt we used to
settle beneath
in the deep snows
of being little.
15
Backlit boulders
and an abundance of
acorn caps
walnut boats
catkin strands:
the loose parts
we staked our stories on.
16 and Trail’s End
It ends like it starts:
no sign for me.
Just a sinking spring house
and the calm assurance
of a good old two-track -
signs the way’s been known before,
maybe leading home.