Practice.

Viazmensky, Matsutake, n/d

OFF the TRAIL

                            for Carole

We are free to find our own way

Over rocks – through the trees –

Where there are no trails. The ridge and the forest

Present themselves to our eyes and feet

Which decide for themselves

In their old learned wisdom of doing

Where the wild will take us. We have

Been here before. It’s more intimate somehow

Than walking the paths that lay out some route

That you stick to,

All paths are possible, many will work,

Being blocked is its own kind of pleasure,

Getting through is a joy, the side-trips

And detours show down logs and flowers,

The deer paths straight up, the squirrel tracks

Across, the outcroppings lead us on over.

Resting on treetrunks,

Stepping out on the bedrock, angling and eyeing

Both making choices – now parting our ways –

And later rejoin; I’m right, you’re right,

We come out together. Mattake, “Pine Mushroom,”

Heaves at the base of a stump. The dense matted floor

Of Red Fir needles and twigs. This is wild!

We laugh, wild for sure,

Because no place is more than another,

All places total,

And our ankles, knees, shoulders &

Haunches know right where they are.

Recall how the Dao De

Jing puts it: the trail’s not the way.

No path will get you there, we’re off the trail,

You and I, and we chose it! Our trips out of doors

Through the years have been practice

For this ramble together,

Deep in the mountains

Side by side,

Over the rocks, through the trees.

Gary Snyder