A Poem a Day (616): The walk

 
The walk 

A cutting wind blows us in two,
peels back the edge of a buttercup carpet.
 
Olive stalks sway, fan this sunbathed land.
We hold nature at arm’s length, picture it
 
through a cold lens, frame it, silence it
when it needs to yell out loud and be released.
 
Slide your bare feet through the warm mud,
churning rivers between your toes. Sienna drips,
 
seeps down this canvas; fuel for the soul,
a gathering, a grounding for the city type.
 
We flit between our own flimsy self-images,
echoes of our childhood shadowed mirror-play.
 
Gnarly branches seek to press our stiff backs forward
down leafy, ground-out trails and grown-over mazes
 
into damp, mossy nooks and crooks of watery pearl,
these crumbling granite walls so cool to our fingertips.
 
Crows lift in a circling cloud and in the far view a single tree
stands statue-still, sketched in hollow against the light.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 10, 2023