Off Trails

struck long ago by lightning
charred heart open to the sky

what doesn’t kill you
leaves you damaged

climbing a mountain to learn
what you already know

like telling the pines apart
by how they whisper

or marveling at birch twigs
etched in sunlight

on the shadow
of the neighboring mountain

and underfoot the moss cracked
like mud in a honeycomb pattern

a kind of ur-text
about cells and absence

the way a life was laid down
ring by ring in a log

or how after the rungs rot away
and the tree topples over

it’s not a ladder anymore
the bark’s long gone

there are just these troupes of rusty nails
awaiting further orders

the sky so clear your binoculars
pick out distant windblown leaves

or follow a hawk
following the ridge for miles

with the leaves down a white
clapboard church appears

with a steeple to staple it in place
between the river and the railroad

where shipping containers roll past
night and day

from this height like pale capsules
full of bad medicine

this is the trouble with all
tracks and paths

it’s time to stop following
and set your feet free

off-trail
on a careful descent

stepping from rock to rock
stopping for twisted oaks

and tall straight pines no 19th-century
logger is coming back for

though a thousand feet downslope
and you’re in pole timber

the whited sepulcher of a tip-up mound
marks the shift from ironstone to shale

through long shadows made feathery
by young white pines

footfalls mingle contrapuntally
with woodpecker taps

on a twisty back road
the tarmac cracks in honeycomb patterns

and the low sun is attentive
to every detail of mummified roadkill

its five-fingered paw
still stretched out

just past a sign that reads
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

MAY GOD HOLD YOU
IN THE PALM OF HIS HAND

on bare wood
in letters of faded blue

The November Shuffle

to walk through new-fallen leaves
is to raise a thunderous hush

at the trailhead a red maple
grown grandiloquent with age

sends me in the wrong direction
past an abandoned scout camp

and a red oak with four massive trunks
festooned with wild grapevines

i scramble upslope to the trail
slipping on dry oak leaves

a tiger moth caterpillar
isn’t moving in the cold

black and bristly as the fisher
fleeing down the trail ahead of me

more like a badger than a weasel
more trundle than leap

the sun comes out and shows me
the shadow sides of things

a snag wearing a shroud
made of paper birch

beeches flaunting a fool’s gold
of lifeless leaves

tiny mushrooms gathered in a hollow
among yellow birch roots

i pause to snap a photo
and let other walkers pass

two panting humans and a poodle
modeling utter joy

throwing himself at the trail
as it turns up a ravine

completely if temporarily in love
with the smallest of waterfalls

i drop back to regain my solitude
worn out by a lingering cold

pick up yet another glossy leaf
to use as a tissue

on the way to the summit of the second
highest mountain in the state

the vistas are grand but I’m here
for the twisted oaks

finding alternate routes to the sun
through all that ridgetop wind

do they fight it or worship it
like Jacob wrestling in the darkness

but how strategic to drop their sails
before the arctic blasts

and with their leaves down
they are fantastical eldritch rococo

the only oaks that aren’t bare yet
are less than a foot tall

embers to catch the eye
of a young man laboring past

on his mountain bicycle
looking at the ground

from here the mountains of home
disappear into the haze

downslope the trees are younger
but bigger and full of themselves

the trail deviates from the map
re-created for two-wheeled recreation

i head off-trail and soon
become un-lost again

reveling in this leaf litter
a shambles not unlike my own

witch hazel blossoms dangle
in the low-angled sun

but my gaze goes
to the moss and ferns

and every last scrap
of embattled green

***
Blue Knob State Park, November 4, 2024

Amnesty

Our lives are an amnesty given us.
William Stafford

meanwhile the trees
are relaxing their grip

turning toward sleep
in a kind of hypnagogia

vivid and hallucinatory
against the gray

‘HUNTERS WEAR ORANGE
SO SHOULD YOU’

though the sign itself is yellow
as are many red maples

it’s the most primary
that school-bus color

meanwhile children play tag
outside an Amish school

in clothes so plain
it marks them as exotic

one of them rooted to the spot
scrunching up his face

a hole opens in the clouds
but not for any missiles

meanwhile skeletons
are unsettling in front yards

one pushes a lawnmower
towards several bony arms

like barked sticks
sprouting from manicured grass

in the distance some engine
i don’t notice until it stops

and i’m left with the sound
of my footsteps in fallen leaves

walking the empty bed
of a former coal country railroad

past pastures and high hayfields
up into the autumn hills

just below the clouds
a raven gives his voice box a shake

and out tumbles
something like a child’s cry
crossed with a horn

18 October 2023

Above the River

there’s no mountain
to the cloud

its shadow wandering
lonely as a poet

who no longer believes
in the power of words

as another name escapes
the tip of my tongue

trees are applauding the wind
their life-long mentor

the black birches are yellow
and the black gums
a pale salmon

a hawk flies through the forest
carrying something small
and very dead

a white-tailed deer
raises and lowers
her eponymous flag

as her antlered companion
seems almost to dance
between the boulders

there’s so little soil
the big oaks get their roots out
before they enter the ground

i take my seat
against a chestnut oak
we rock together in the wind

occasionally it makes
a high inhuman sound
that vibrates in my bones

The Turn

it starts with a zipper in the rain
that soft syllable

an oak leaning into
its impending death

you can shelter under it
as open as a book

it starts red and wrong
as an oak apple

old sapsucker holes bleeding
pale sap down a spruce

rain collecting in a hollow
atop an exposed birch root

so the tree can mainline it
like an autumn addict

mushrooms glory
in their fruiting bodies

as black drupes swell on maple-
leafed viburnum

and beechdrops’ self-fertilized flowers
hide under a twiggy bouquet

it’s a kind of spring
buried in the heart of autumn

just before antlers turn
from trees into weapons

and every leaf in the forest
goes off-script

September Ghosts

fog forms in the meadow
at first light

rising from the mop-
topped goldenrod

as if it were the conjoined breaths
of a shadowy golden horde

massed against the bald
white fact of the barn

its credible rooflines
asphalt-tiled

in the same dark green as
the ridges that flank the field

the barn’s ridgeline broken
by a slatted cupola

to draw air through
whether for hay or horses

or once a hundred years ago
a circus elephant

who spent the summer tethered
on the threshing floor

no one can remember why
only that it was here and lonely

like the young lady
a generation later

who came to the hollow to hide
an unplanned pregnancy

one winter shuttered up
in the summer house

with a church organ
they heard her playing Bach

for years after she and the child
died together at birth

every Appalachian hollow
has its share of ghosts

but the sun tops the ridge
and the fog shapes vanish

catching in spiderwebs
glistening on the breast of a wren

Facing North

turkey-tail polypore
eavesdropping on dead air

a turtle has left its shell
for the autumn rain

a cloud forms just below me
on the rocky slope between the trees

moves without moving
ceasing to be here and re-forming there

and i am seeing ghosts again
it’s a question of distance

a galleon of vague regrets
drifting toward the horizon

or the fine spine and spool of her
unwinding in a wind of fingers

the air is cool but close
acorns fall with muffled thumps

on the north side of the mountain
the moss grows deep

a mosquito swells and darkens
on the back of my hand

A Walk in the Park

dead tree green
with poison ivy

sugar maples self-grafting
like circus freaks

a black birch wearing
a hollow locust tree like a coat

these are among
the unsettling attractions

at the Allegheny Portage Railroad
National Historic Site

a monument to the great unsettling
of the American West

but what’s bitter in the morning
may be sweet by afternoon

i drink hot tea from a thermos mug
like an offering to the heat

staying one pace ahead
of my cloud of insects

though i stop for everything:
the man-made cliffs

dripping with native plants
the detours to peer

at old stone culverts
the interpretive signs

slowly being reinterpreted
by age and weather

preservation and transformation
are dance partners here

foundations are buried
for their protection says a sign

with a photo of the little we’re missing
in black and white

meanwhile the bumblebees
are making love to yellow touch-me-nots

Bombylius major pokes his pointy snout
deep into a lobelia

and a mother leads two teenagers
on a sullen walk for their health

now we are beginning
to get somewhere i think

as an alarmed pickerel frog
disappears into his puddle

and although one might wish
for less proximity to a highway

the trees are old and strange
and i am in my element

no longer on the way to elsewhere
people choose to live here in the hills

our journeys are local
our histories are brief

a sign exhorts us to leave
no trace

August 25, 2023

Doom Loop

just past the last internet tower
a rattlesnake’s elegant S

slipping through the crushed stone
almost makes you
want its skin

and divining this
its terminal bones
buzz in your direction:

down-ridge over the rocks’
stormwater eyes

which let you pass through them
as easily as the vultures

or the common mullein
at the first overlook

from a seed planted
by a hiker’s boot

on a well-loved trail
a raccoon’s footprint

might spell hard luck
for endangered wood rats

and yes most of the old trees
have fallen to new blights or pests

that travel the same
pilgrimage route

hemlock woolly adelgids
hitching rides on birds’ feet

spongy moth caterpillars
ballooning in each June

but the vistas are glorious
one can still dream wilderness dreams

ignoring recent clearcutting
in the swampy woods below

the old oaks that remain up here
are still so extravagant

seeming to gesture
seeming to conjure up

you can find forests two inches tall
made of gray-green lichen

stop to watch a slug
cross a jagged rock

a study in single-mindedness
gliding on his/her orange foot

or a sharp-shinned hawk
might speak to you

from atop a snag
your eyes meet

you notice how the branch
keeps swaying after he flies

launching into the green-
feathered wind

descent is difficult
who wouldn’t rather stay high

on a mountain stretching
half-way across the state

low as a wrinkle
in the earth’s hide

this would-be spine where pines
grow old and empty

and you peer into the largest one
and find another snake

this time no wilderness creature
but a black rat snake

coiled and sleeping like
the climber’s rope that it is

nearby a tussock caterpillar
yo-yos in mid-air

white and bristly
as a lost eyebrow

and charmed you decide
to walk all afternoon

looping back
in the long shadows
to your car

Jackson Trail, Rothrock State Forest
August 11, 2023

Brain Fog

awoken by a dying rabbit
its shrieks in the night

i dream a cleaver-shaped moon
rain soft as fur

in the small hours even
the mosquitoes are sleeping

i listen to the surf of blood
pulsing in my temples

a cloud has come down for us
we don’t need to rise