Forest Paths

These roads remember what they were,
cuts made for harvest.

No one planned their afterlife.

See how they follow the land’s own thinking
where water won’t gather.

The road makers read contours as scripture,
finding routes earth favored.

Now deer read the same text.

Compacted earth refuses seeds.
Sixty years later the path stays clear.

Morning finds fresh tracks.
Coyote, turkey, bear,
all using roads built for removing trees
to move through trees.

At old intersections signs have fallen.
Yet all creatures know these crossroads.

Where logs once waited stacked,
clearings persist.
Grass grows changed here,
sunlight finds old commerce circles.

The ditches dug for drainage
guide spring runoff still.

Function outlasts intention.

These roads tell which sections fell when,
how timber moved.

But they tell more,
how necessity carves channels
that remain useful
long after necessity passes.

Hunters know them.
Hikers need them.
Search parties bless their clarity.

Foresters too use these old cuts,
following paths their grandfathers’ bosses paid for.

One person said these roads were wounds.
Watch the forest use its scars.

In November when leaves fall
you can see the whole network.
Veins of extraction become
the paths by which the forest returns.

The road builders could not imagine
their straight hunger leaving curves
that would last past their companies.

At dawn mist follows these old roads.

The forest does not forget.
It simply learns to walk on them.