Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WHO HAS GONE THROUGH THE WOOD, by FLORIS CLARK MCLAREN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHO HAS GONE THROUGH THE WOOD, by                    
First Line: Is there no landmark: no north-growing moss
Last Line: To hear the slow rings growing.
Subject(s): Forests; Woods


Is there no landmark: no north-growing moss:
No cairn, no dipper-star, no color of dawn:
Only pale end of night succeeding dark?

Surely we saw that split-top pine last night
But in the other direction: do trees move
Striding across the forest in the dark:
Do mountains play cat-corner so we go
Stumbling bewildered toward identical hills
Through similar thickets?

Here are signs that another has come this way:
A broken mullein spike, a trodden leaf,
A pressed-down hollow of moss where he lay to rest. ....
Or did we rest here? Was this the trickle of stream
Where we wet our handkerchiefs in the afternoon?
There are snapped-off twigs,
There are other footprints here
Joining and crossing: are they all our own?
Confusion come full circle: the hidden fear
Crouched in the thicket:
The thunder, the mounting stormheads, the copper sky.

Wind in the cracking trees: the dangerous air
Hurls javelin branches. Cower from the sharp-edged rain
Hide from the wind: hide where?

If this were fire exploding from pine to pine
We could run together, run from the terror, find
Safety perhaps: a stream or the edge of the wood:
The shared perception incredibly heightened: the focused
Experience suddenly clear: the shattering fire-flash of vision.
But this is not terror. This is only fear:
Fear and the cold uncertainty that sends us
Hopelessly calling through the trees
Shielding our heads with our arms
Numb, separate, lost.

With the spend wind, the reaffirming sun,
The after-peace of storm, pause momently
In the pulsing forest: ask again
The unanswered question.

Now has the light changed?

Sun over storm wrack: litter of broken boughs
Not prism-edged but every leaf defined
In clean perspective:
Here is the trail waist-deep in windfall now:
Move the heaped branches slowly tediously
Make a new path around this prostrate tree
Root-spread against the sky.
Go wary where the swamp-edge sucks your feet
Presently reach the safe the hard-packed ground.

In this towering trunk of time blind circles go
Narrowing back to the center, the constant heart;
And see against the sky the needles stirred
By rhythmic high air currents, the future flowing
From pattern to pattern. This is all we know.
Lay your ear to the resin-beaded bark
To hear the slow rings growing.





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