The path bends, bright and wide and wending

I see it not, the future to be trod, the crush of

untouched fortune there

But ahead lies childhood impressions in the overgrowth,

and memory of blossoms at the waist

So I rushed the narrow rut to gather

blooming fistfuls, fretting little over small terrors in the brush 

And I crested the rise to behold the silky meadow

And stillness took me, the spring crisp, the bloom arrested,

colored light beholden to the neutered green

And lovely as it was, the child awakened ached for

waist-high blossoms

And in that regression, I shed my shoes in that sacred space,

the child of mind too young then to beware the stinging nettles underfoot