Garden path
I carried a great stone up
a mountain for an age.
It would fall and I would
have to fall farther to catch it.
When all your progress can be
erased in an instant there is
no rest, no rest. Recovery
is for after reaching the goal.
I hauled that stone for an age,
filthy and twitching, then one
day halfway up I
realized –
this is not my mountain
this is not my stone
what if I never get to the top?
so what if I never get to the top?
and I turned off the road
and when I could no longer see it
I put that stone down in the moss
I remember the moss but I couldn’t say
where I put the stone,
I can’t picture it even after all that time.
I wandered all the way to the sea
and followed a great river
until it was swallowed by trees.
——————
when you go walking in the black woods,
go barefoot
so that you can better heed
the voices of the folk who live there.