Trails - Part VII

How to count the days of my trail?

How to number the steps of my trial?

How to see whether triumph or travail

awaits me at my journey’s end?

I keep time the old way

with the speeding race

of Apollo’s chariot across the sky

and fix my position by the passing

of Polaris and Orion’s belt.

I drink when I thirst,

I eat when I hunger,

I rest when weariness overcomes me.

I carry on until the muse who prods

my restless bones with the electric sting of wanderlust

tells me I have arrived; my journey

into the unknown is complete,

the flight of driven fancy fulfilled.

The forest grows scant as I climb upward

in my southerly quest,

the maple, oak, and ask replaced

by long needled firs

and fragrant wax-green leafed

flowering bushes.

Wild raspberry gives way to huckleberry,

and as the valley deepens,

or perhaps it is the trail that rises,

the mist is my one constant companion.

I hear the approach of thunder.

The wind becomes itself a foe to be conquered

its weapons the blinding wash of torrential rain,

searing flash of laser bolts,

the explosive roar thunder and wind,

and the gun-shot rattle of frozen bullets

that strip the skin from tree and bush

and creature foolish enough to stare

into its raging face.

I hide, shivering and shuddering

from the tempestuous tantrum

in the belly of a hollowed pine

whose towering height

and gluttonous girth

have somehow managed

to withstand the maelstrom

as if by some unknown bit

of natural wisdom carried

to its slender green-tipped fingers

whispers into the shadows,

this, too shall pass.