Earthed




Hedgetrees exude an energy of moving, even frozen in their dance: it goads a passerby to wander further.
I've come this far, I could take a stroll in the woods.
The top path is shining, licked by rain. All the fallen leaves make soft compost. Trees grip the abrupt edges with roots like dinosaur toes. Where the path is smothered by fallen timbers, there is a new path being worn beneath. Above is rotted limbs and some low badger tracks.
I've never trod there, and it's so close. I've come this far.
The bracken is black, frost smitten; the prone wood-flesh uncomfortably soft. Only the brambles are green and fresh and drag blood from unwary skin. Where the track runs out is too steep for standing, descent happens as a seated slide.
Sometimes the moss here grows bigger than the trees.
Three hours pass. Dog and I, mud flecked, drowsy, find the house again.
We both seem surprised, to unearth this life outside the woods.





Comments

Suze said…
When I read about these treks of yours, I feel gnarled. At 'the end,' I become self-conscious and 'see' that my face is contorted in virtuviscerality.

You force something out of your readers, Lily. Not that you're trying. It just happens that way. Take for example,

'the prone wood-flesh uncomfortably soft.'

I have never stepped there, and yet now, in a very real way, I have and I can never go back.

Does that make sense?
3 February 2013 at 21:33
Lisa Southard said…
It does make sense Suze, and it makes me do a hedgetree dance :-) xx
-Virtuviscerality!! Superb!
3 February 2013 at 21:54
Geo. said…
Again, magical. It all seems to be reaching into the future, trees that have jumped their roots, hedge that has laid itself, toward something. Time is recalibrated --added, not deducted.
4 February 2013 at 07:18
Lisa Southard said…
Thank you Geo- this is a good summation- recalibrated time :-)
6 February 2013 at 00:20
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