never minding

darkness
musk and morels
edible fungi
black worms
snaking tributaries
dank forest moss
sweating leaves
spent, fallen twigs
dew dropping
sinking deep
the wilderness floor
wide open display
lying complete
buried alive by
his soft murmurs.

    My companion and I have been hiking the last many days, increasing our mileage and skill level with each hike, so we are exhausted at day's end, sleep well, and unfortunately I don't have hours left in the day to go on line to read and post as often … wait, that would be fortunately, I don't have the time as summer is quite the insistent muse.

    Off-line I have the makings of a poetry-prose/hiking/wildflower/bird and creature journal chronically the paths we're taking, soon to add the mountain bike paths when we have more days off in a row and don't have to return to home base because of work schedules. 

    Lately, as we hike, one or the other of us will whisper-chant, "musk and morels …" while we are deep in the forest, as we careful-step a particularly swamping/murky lowland or to move our spirits as we ascend yet another incline.  It has become to us our "lions and tigers and bears, oh my" sing-song as we trek and trek.  We might as well be singing, "kames, kettles, drumlins and eskers," instead of "follow the yellow brick road," on our daily journeys through the glaciered areas surrounding us. Every step we take of late has us going back in history as we stare into water-filled kettle holes, from our sloping vantage points, wondering at the height and might of the ice mass that originally performed this landscape artwork.

    This poem is a reprint from the April premiere issue of the Adagio Verse Quarterly, which I was thinking of today while I've had some time on line before work.  The July issue of this quarterly online poetry journal is due out soon, so check it out at the link below … edited and co-edited by two known to AuthorsDen, Michael Paul Ladanyi and Robert Edward Levin, respectively.

In the meantime enjoy, and happy creating to you all.  -a