amidst the darkened box wood trees

" In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost." Dante, 'The Divine Comedy'


amidst the darkened box wood trees
legs and arms scratched from the bramble
poison ivy, lethal red berries strewn
she sensed another trail

leading to where she knew not,
yet the path she had been walking
narrowed- offering her so little light
she could not read, so simply felt signs

the birds' songs became more muffled,
the deeper she had gone into the forest
she knew the trail that was lined with dogwood
would bring her to a clarity not found among all the oaks

it was still late winter, but she could picture
how different trees welcomed her more profoundly than others;
the auric fields of the red cedar contacted her bindi-
brightening her mental head lights

stepping lightly, and sometimes deeply
though hip high snow- trudging where no other
person had been for awhile- she cracked
a smile, with her curved horizontal recognition

a balancing was becoming her, in reddened cheeks
and eyes shining like emerald cities- freeing the need
for recognition- the lunging forward, in her gentle
allowing of what is- to take place- letting the music

flow thunderously through the deepest snow
birds, whom she did not hear all winter
suddenly began to sing the sweet and low-
chariot, coming to carry me home- causing her to stop, dead in her tracks

to praise all sounds, and music left to sing
sauntering, blessing- what without, our world would perish
for both those in persons who rose-lifted up from their bodies as we knew them,
and those who remain in rare variations- as calder mobile shapes to continue

Kate Lamberg

shadows on the snow~photo by Kate Lamberg