FEBRUARY FIELD JOURNAL

FEBRUARY FIELD JOURNAL
The Watershed Center

The name you can say isn’t the real name;
the way you can go isn’t the real way.
	~The Tao Te Ching, version by Ursula K. Le Guin


What can we observe
about this creature,
in this forest?
Stop and look.
Make no assumptions.

Sometimes she walked
straight along an open path,
sometimes she zig-zagged
under low branches.
She stopped here 
by a deer trail, and here
beside a coyote’s trotting way.

She stopped
in front of this yellow birch,
and this hemlock,
and this white pine.
See how she sank her heels
into the ground.

For awhile she sat
in this clearing,
looking toward the south.
Notice the nutshell 
and the breadcrumbs.
Notice the prints beside her.
She wasn’t alone.

We can see clearly
that she wasn’t here alone.

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