The Winding Woods

photo by ayacata7.

It isn’t always straight forward, the way we find our way through the woods. It isn’t always by light of morning but sometimes by light of moon, when the owl’s hoot and silent wingspan fills dark spaces between the trees, and when eyes aglow follow our trail, quiet, waiting.

It isn’t always plain to see, the town that comes beyond the hill. The ramshackle huts with smoke drifting skyward, or the laundry drying on the dead brambles, or the twisted sheen of the madmen gathered near the well.

It isn’t always what we thought it would be, this love of the girl we travel to see, this milkmaid or seamstress or nursemaid’s scullion. At times she hides a blush behind her hand, while others she screams with pretty little fists that beat your chest, hollowed and tight like a drum. Then the stolen moments, fleeting for the memory to cup, and ugly moments that will never end and neither drink nor sleep will see it fade, and once she is gone there are all the moments that never were, but that we play upon and mould with hands now empty. Linger upon days that could have been, if we had found our way by different paths, for the woods know best, in their weathered bark and aged span of limbs, which is the path for me that day, and the next, and the next.