The walks were made in September and October 2013. I made the walks in the dark of night with no torch or mobile. I avoided the forest paths and cut straight through the untouched woods. Not to be recommended unless you are happy with yourself in deep darkness. The poem extended itself into a meditation on existence and the Absolute. It is linked here. A year later I found myself wanting to make the walk again and write a shorter, tighter account. This poem is the result. It has 162 lines and the blank verse is smoother than that of the first poem, although still too rugged for my current taste.
------------------
(Thursday 2 October 2014, 7.15 pm – 8.10 pm)
A
half moon, golden-bronze, threw
silver light.
Awkwardly
stumbling through the woods, unpathed,I rued that light for in the chasms of
The thinning oak and maple crowns its glare
Was dazzling, swamping night sight like a wave
Collapsing saltily and forcing me
To duck my eyes; to no avail; two steps
And once more under cover, my sight was gone
And blackness like a squeezing hand stopped dead
My track until by grope I could gauge a way
Ahead. The wood was silent, frigid-still,
Except with timefelt slowness like a surd,
A stick or acorn or a green-pursed chestnut
Fell through the branches with a bouncing rustle
Till gruffly thudding in the forest mould.
Just once that night I heard a rabbit with
A panicked scuttle dash through undergrowth,
And once a rat or vole discreetly nipped
Through holly, disdaining my marauding feet.
A streamlet rattled thinly, trickling over
Poultices piled by rotting chestnut leaves,
Blackly wadded and sour like sodden dishcloths.
But no owls called, despite the moon’s halloo
To go a’hunting; and the wind stood still,
This October night of summer’s final warmth.
Working by toe-touch through the wood’s incline
The year’s leaf-fall eddied about my feet,
Faintly fawn in the scattered shards of light.
Taut as shavings and dank as mildewed rope
There were dried-flesh oak leaves, clawed like witches’ hands,
Yellowing black-blotched lime, as flat as skin,
And tubelike paper scrolls of chestnut leaves,
Copper-orange and crushing underfoot
Like soda crisps. In screes they banked about
Old branches, tumbled on the ground like limbs
And rotten as stale bread, crunching queasily
When trodden like a snapping of dead men’s ribs.
Draped between boles and blank-dark holly bushes,
Spiders’ weavings enswirled my face and neck
With leaf-hung web, clinging to lips and tongue
And launching fast-legged spiders to dash through hair
Or over cheeks, chased by my slapping hand.
Wind-fallen aspen trunks debarred my way,
Mere bars of blackness in the clinging dark;
Bestriding them cost legs and ankles dear
As unseen brambles clawed at bone and nettles
Invaded leggings with their stinging stab.
Vague at my shoulder was a musty stand
Of dust-strewn, cobwebbed rusty-brittle ferns,
Now dying back but still I knew from dire
Experience a haunt of skin-drawn gnats;
Always, on these nocturnal treks, I bore
The black-blood blisters itching like a goad
From previous hikes. At the woods’ steepest plane
I slowed to an ill-footed indecision,
The unmoving dark as thick as Hades’ fog;
The forest slope was chocked with fallen birch,
The ground was grubbed as if prospectors had
Left the earth pitted, treacherous to the foot.
So, wincingly, toe-tapping like some dancer,
I nudged my way by touch and guess across
The boles and through the holly stands and brambles,
An arm extended with an upright stave,
Like Orpheus lurching in the underworld,
To ward off creepers, hanging web and branches.
