My Old Path

My old path cut through the woods
Leading to a hidden pond,
A museum of frogs
That made the water seem alive
More than one time
A swan tried to seek refuge
In this wood I called mine,
But it was not hers to claim.
This was turtle land.
I remember the turtle -
A snapper so big,
It hissed at anyone
Who came near.
We never dared go near,
My friends and I;
We were too afraid
That he'd take our fingers
And keep them for life.
The pond was his after all.

07/09

Near to the turtle's pond was a place
We called "Place" because
It was a place to place yourself
In the hot afternoon.
It was a clearing in the woods
That seemed so enticing.
At one time there was a table,
At another time there was a sofa,
Another time there was a painted wood structure
Made from the table
A shopping cart and beer bottles were
The regular refuse of "Place."
One day Ian and I walked down my old path
Approaching "Place" from behind.
Before we arrived we spied two older kids
Smoking, drinking -Smokers and drinkers
Were the architects of "Place."
From that point on "Place" was spoiled,
Corrupted by teenagers
We did not yet understand.
So we found a smaller clearing
On the other side of the pond.
That place we called "There"
To stick by the vague names
We found so hilarious.
"There" was not so large.
It was smaller, mosquito full
And thorns hung around instead of smokers.
Even so my friends and I
Stayed there for many afternoons
Until the day we caught poison ivy.
After that "There" lost its appeal.

It didn't matter though.
There were too many paths and passages
Weaving through the woods
To keep only to one spot.
John and I would chase my brother
And his friends, scaring them in the woods,
Jumping out at every turn.
We knew the woods better than they.
But my dog sam, he knew the woods
Better than me.
He would forage and hunt
But never catch a thing,
Miniature domestic that he was.
Back then, unleashed, my dog
Would stampede into the pond water
To terrify the ducks.
They would quack at the invader,
Flap their wings, then take off.
My dog, so proud,
Would think he had won.
Two minutes later the ducks would return
And continue their lives
Like nothing had happened.
This cycle occurred time and again
Until one day an embittered woman,
Fed up with the poop from the ducks in the pond
Fed the ducks poisoned bread,
A devil's communion.
The ducks ate and were killed,
The town picked up their bodies,
And the pond became silent
Of duck calls and shit.
No duck clan would ever Live there again.
Honeymooning ducks might stop by
For a time, once in a while
But the pond was a massacre
And no duck ever stayed long.

After the duck deaths
A family of beavers came to
Saw down the trees and make a dam.
Their dam clogged the stream
That drained the pond
Causing the pond to flood
Through the woods, into "Place"
And beyond the far reach
Towards the bike path
And beyond.
The town complained about the flooding
And the beavers were killed,
Their dam broken open,
And the floodwaters drained.
But the mud from the flood
Lingered on through the seasons,
To the winter's harsh cold
When it froze in the ground.
If you lifted chunks of the earth
You could see ice crystals collected
In the black dirt;Little crystal kingdoms
Lost in a world of utter blackness.
When the snow fell, the mud was covered,
The woods became new;
A blank canvas for nautre and history,
A new-born world for me to leave footprints upon.

In Silent sunday mornings
When Lexington slept
Colonial times could be resurrected
For seconds at a time.
My woods held devils and prospects
But above all it held beauty,
Sublime reverence for land untouched,
Harboring still the spirit of freedom
And the ruthless heart of nature in one.
There was, of course, the tampering of man
But always it was overshadowed
By the progress of time
And the trees' willingness to grow
And how the mud persisted still!
And the heart persists too
In a place and a time
When there was my family,
Having just moved to a new house,
Deciding to explore the snowy, silent woods,
Early one sunday morning
When Lexington slept,
And we got lost heading down
This new path to the pond
We did not yet know was there.
My brother and my parents and I and my dog
Got lost in the woods in the snow.
Though lost, we found snow drifts
Silently falling from the trees and up from the ground.
We laughed and made snow angels
Knowing home was not far away,
We could get there if we tried,
If we wanted to...
But for that brief moment,
For that sliver of memory and space,
We chose to be lost in the woods
By the turtle's pond in the winter
Of the first year in our new house,
Walking along that ancient wooded path that stretches
From one point in history to the next
In a spectrum of feeling and sight and memory
That we can't help but quantify as God,
With no beginnings or ends
No failures or wins
Just slices and portions of lost, lost, lost
And found again
In a blanket world of snow and purity
In my woods by my pond off my old path.


Coda:

Last week I tried again to traverse
My old path
But it was overgrown.
I could not get through
No matter what I tried.
I had no machete,
Nor would I have used one if I did.
I was shut out from the woods
Like a trapped thief of memory.
But then, so too must we all someday
Stop walking on, lose sight of,
And be deprived of
Our old paths.

07/09