1:47 pm

O, sing a song of fall desires,

Of cool wind-mashed clouds and freezing skies,

And the trees that look not quite so green, but dry;

And of the one voice that calls when all the rest

Fall quiet.

2:10 pm

Dead end, says the mustard sign,

But for me it's the live beginning,

Only the end of the bright outsides of houses

That leave me dull within.

Sailors need sea-room; let me have land-room,

Space enough for long thoughts

And loves I'm still pursuing.

So I pedal till I could break my bike's heart--

Or at least the speed limit--

And fly dry-throated to a place away,

A dead-end nook, a cleft in the woods along the road.

Benches rest in a welcoming open square:

A place for friends, but today for myself along the road.

The sign planted by the trailhead reads, "Hours:

Eight a.m. to sunset." Foolish.

As if the woods were not on their own time, their own heartbeat.

2:25 pm

"POND" and a pointing arrow--

A laconic gesture but significant,

As if the water were some great attraction

To merit its own noticeboard.

So I follow the path and find

Not a pond, but a flat green sward--

That's what you'd think, at least,

If it weren't for the crooked length of dock

And the frozen serpents of tree limbs

Sunk halfway in that greeness

Which no wind stirs.

2:35 pm

A useless bridge.

In the streambed (barely a scrape in the muddy earth),

A lone brown puddle quivers.

The bridge railing sprawls in the dirt.

It must have fallen down in despair

Of not having a purpose.

The path's riddled with roots.

Woodbirds--boastful-headed chickadees,

Peering slate nuthatches,

And a woodpecker, snowy-chested--

Flitter tantalizing, irritated,

And at last drift elusively away.

Only a few enquiring mosquitos stay.

(And a pair of chasing squirrels, so obsessed

With their haphazard race

They do not notice I'm sitting on their bridge

Until they've scooted past and turned to cast a guilt-bright eye

On the danger they've left behind them.)

2:50 pm

Seams, gleams of gold in the great emerald tree

(How I love the great emerald bulk of a tree

Alive and aware, yet monumental).

What is this sunlight only a few leaves can feel

Trickling down the rough fingers like some sort of honey?

A light that exists in the mind

3:02 pm

Red leaf on the trodden trail,

Arresting as a stop-sign of the woods,

Alone among its kind.

A glance about reveals no parent tree, beacon-blazing.

Yet still the path is scattered with tiny flames.

Some humorous arsonist must be the culprit.

3:10 pm

The end sweeps soon.

Before my feet are ready the path curves back

And drops me where I began,

Where my bike waits, a little rusty, still panting.

It's back to the road for me, back to the closed-up land.

But I have breathed with trees, and my soul is sated.

I carry a bit of the cloud-shaping wind back home in my hair.