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.
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.
ReplyDeleteYou 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?
It does make sense Suze, and it makes me do a hedgetree dance :-) xx
ReplyDelete-Virtuviscerality!! Superb!
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.
ReplyDeleteThank you Geo- this is a good summation- recalibrated time :-)
ReplyDelete