Tracks

You see a path in the woods, a well-worn trail
Between and among trees
Where someone has traveled often enough to kill
What lay underfoot,
And all you have to do is follow it
To avoid the dead ends,
To the bogging down, the exhaustion, all the self-sour
Nightmares of trail-breaking.
A path says, Left or right, these are the ways
Someone wanted to go
Over and over, back and forth from home
To somewhere useful,
Or from somewhere necessary to somewhere safe.
These aren’t your ways.
Although you realize the little you find
On your own may be
What no one else has ever wanted to know,
You remember the tree beside you 
From its embryo has gone upward and outward
And down and in
And has no need of a pathway since it lives
At its height, at its taproot,
Just under its own circumference, and around
The fire of its heartwood,
And you step across and go on letting each foot
Fall carefully,
Softly and slowly, quietly, yet always
Impulsively, so it leaves 
As little trace, as little death as moss
Against moss by nightfall.


Crossing a Path, by David Wagoner