Hiking Poems Read online

Hiking Poems

  By Lenny Everson

  rev 1

  Copyright Lenny Everson 2011

  This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  Cover design by Lenny Everson

  ****

  List of Poems

  Thermometer Rising

  April

  Let Distance Speak

  National Mosquito Month

  I Have Crossed Landscapes

  Lost and Found

  The One-Pine Inn

  Eden

  Rolling the Tent

  A Hiker's Christmas Gifts

  January and Maps

  February Schemes

  Never Ordinary

  April Trails

  Map, Packsack, Dreams And All

  There Were a Few Trails

  If We Were Free

  Thunder Dance

  And Galaxies Slide By

  Another Leaf, Not Yet At Rest

  Trail and I

  The Sepiatone Trail

  First Snow

  Crossing Winter Swamp

  ****

  Thermometer Rising

  The cookstove is polished to a fairly nice gleam

  My boots are more or less tight

  The packsack is airing out on the line

  The thermometer's rising tonight

  Somewhere the snow disappears from the trail

  Somewhere the hillsides break free

  Somewhere the wind is calling the name

  Of someone real close to me

  It's not that the house isn't friendly and warm

  It's not that the ground isn't cold

  But how often does a March wind come singing one's name

  How often does springtime unfold

  The maps are tucked in a big plastic pouch

  The routes, I keep in my heart

  Measure tomorrow by the length of my stride

  And my life from the moment I start

  ****

  April

  And all the hills of April stream

  With warming water from winter's dream

  And all the hills and gullies run

  Away from here, one by one

  Angels of change I never knew

  Have left me by the wayside, true

  But my heart is dancing in the breeze

  In April skies, in April trees

  And on a hilltop, where grasses sway

  And clouds are gambling with the day

  I lean my pack against a tree

  And let the winds sing songs to me

  The skies may fill with April rain

  But I return to life again

  Happy now, for it seems

  I've not forgotten all my dreams

  ****

  Let Distance Speak

  There are those who are most alive

  Where horizon meets the sky

  In May the quickening world belongs

  To a loaded pack and I

  Ghosts and dreams and desperate schemes

  Considered, and forgot

  Cornered in the afternoons

  But never, ever caught

  I've done my time at a desk

  Pretending to be me

  I am in truth upon the hills

  Fierce and fine and free

  I'm a flash of color on a rising trail

  And past some flooded creek

  In May my friends may call my name

  But I let distance speak

  ****

  National Mosquito Month

  To the natural buzz and bite of June

  I donate my blood (for free)

  And give, on the lower Avon Trail

  Some surface parts of me

  Ecologically, I rate

  Reasonably high

  Many fed and very few squished

  (Despite a thoughtless try)

  Some part of nature's inner peace

  My heart takes home, I guess

  My soul inspired, my body weight

  Just a little less

  In honor of National Mosquito Month

  I do my noble part

  And, autographed with polka dots

  I graciously depart

  ****

  I Have Crossed Landscapes

  I have crossed landscapes

  And am proud of it

  Carrying a pack on a July ridge

  Pausing on the trail, by a swamp, the frogs

  Fearing me, lapsing into silence

  I have waited out thunderstorms

  And gone on, the flat-rock trails moving

  With deerflies

  And do not regret it

  If, dead, I were to find Paradise

  There would be landscapes

  For me to cross

  Till the world and I

  Fell off our edges

  ****

  Lost and Found

  It's nothing, of course

  The wind in the aspen tops

  Some dark cloud whispering "rain"

  Some terrible silence of the cicadas

  The city man's doubts return again

  I shift the pack's weight to my shoulders

  The ground, underfoot, moving a bit

  The hill, the hill more steep than I had thought

  And I, almost afraid of it

  Sometimes in August, on a first-time trail

  Moving out of remembered ground

  Only a glimpse of oak and sky

  Separates lost from found

  Only a promise in wood and sky

  And a light beyond the ridge

  Changes a trail from an endless line

  And makes, of it, a bridge.

  ****

  The One-Pine Inn

  The creek is busy with gravity

  And as clear as London gin

  I sit beside the fireplace

  Down at the One-Pine Inn

  The residents murmur quietly

  And inspect my tender skin

  Approving of the evening meal

  Served at the One-Pine Inn

  There's dirt beneath my fingernails

  And hair on my unshaved chin

  But nobody seems to really mind

  Here at the One-Pine Inn

  The supper is stew, as usual

  Served in a sooty tin

  But it's hot and filling and what I need

  For my stay at the One-Pine Inn

  Seven miles I had to haul

  My personal luggage in

  And after midnight it gets right chill

  In September, at the One-Pine Inn

  But the Management responds to all complaints

  With an awkward lunar grin

  And serves an after-dinner round of peace

  Again, at the One-Pine Inn

  ****

  Eden

  October is the church of God

  Built in yellow leaf

  It refutes this hiker's autumn doubts

  Impels, instead, belief

  Each hill's an arched cathedral roof

  Craft in granite beams

  That give me faith this world is more

  Than merely what it seems

  The final mile takes me through

  Transepts of quiet beech

  And choirs of geese bring Eden now

  Just within my reach

  ****

  Rolling the Tent

  Outside, the wind is dancing with the night

  In tawdry tangles, in clothes of black and brown

  By dawn the rain will dress itself in white

  Winter's dog, November, snoops around

  In the basement, the polished cooker now reflects r />
  The hats and ropes and sundry summer gear

  The pack's on a peg, the shelf collects

  The sorted debris of another year

  The dark outside dances with the year

  The trees outside tango in the rain

  I make sure the basement floor is clear

  And, carefully, I roll the tent again

  ****

  A Hiker's Christmas Gifts

  What I'd like for Christmas gifts?

  I'm not that tough to please

  I've always got a lengthy list

  So set your mind at ease

  Some days where sunshine scatters clouds

  Out past known and known

  A pathway through some range of hills

  Where we can be alone

  A campsite by some tiny creek

  Firewood plenty and dry

  Some sparrows to watch us settle in

  Gold in the evening sky

  A full moon to... Oh dear!

  Why the heavy sigh?

  I really need... some warmer gloves

  And... of course another tie

  ****

  January and Maps

  In January, we at last

  Get out the maps from season past

  And trace the trails that got away

  Every cancelled hiking day

  While the snow is soft and deep

  While the world appears to sleep

  We remember drizzle, weekends lost

  Workdays when we mourned the cost

  But in these fireplace days we know

  That there will be an end to snow

  And those same horizons lie

  Below the coming summer's sky

  And we with tent and pack will find

  What we never left behind

  ****

  February Schemes

  Ah, but I'm devious, making my plans

  With the parallel truth of a map

  And this time of year, you cannot suspect

  You're walking right into my trap

  Now you're making muffins with raisins and bran

  The world's in a Pleistocene grip

  But I've got a scheme with a backpack and sun

  And I'm carefully writing the script

  I've discovered a ridgeline that we've never seen

  Plotted a green rendezvous

  Long shadows panel the February dark

  But I'm already in summer with you

  ****

  Never Ordinary

  Call it an ordinary day

  I disagree

  Call it an ordinary wind

  Discount what it is to be free

  There's a hymn to the March wind

  Opaque to the long drift of time

  There's a resurrection to the landscape

  Hillsides, from late winter grime

  It's much too cold to camp

  The deep woods still full of snow

  But all I want, touching the wind

  Is to get out my packsack and go...

  ****

  April Trails

  For all the Aprils that ever were

  I wrote this poem

  For all the men who ever hoisted a pack

  Beneath a darkening sky, in April

  I write this poem

  No decorum is necessary

  I have chameleoned

  All the white, cold winter

  Fooling only those

  Who don't know me

  In the soggy, soggy clearing

  In the afternoon rain

  I shift the tight April straps

  And now it's downhill

  Valley, trail, and ridgeline

  All the way to autumn

  ****

  Map, Packsack, Dreams And All

  I suppose I've been sitting in the office chair

  Seeing distances and trails

  For about two weeks, now

  I suppose I've been staring at the map on the wall

  By the desk

  Doing the company out of time

  And time

  I think management should chuck

  A few of us into the wild

  Each May, for a week or two

  Just to find out if it improves our work

  And appreciation of company benefits

  Just let them know

  I'm available

  Map, packsack, dreams and all

  I'm available

  ****

  There Were a Few Trails

  When they ask, "Did he truly live?"

  Say I found a ridge

  At the edge of the sky

  Say I knew what the morning was

  The light through the woods

  The dew in June heavy on the tent

  Say I came to each new path

  With anticipation

  Almost greed

  Someday, when they ask, "Did he truly live?"

  Say, "There were a few trails

  That made his life a poem."

  ****

  If We Were Free

  If we were free

  Of time's own dues

  We might never tie on

  Our hiking shoes

  If life were long

  And not so frail

  There'd be little call

  Of winding trail

  If we never had

  To age or die

  There'd be always tomorrow

  Or next July

  A bit too cold

  Or chance of rain

  We'd find ourselves

  At home again

  Walk in joy, and

  Do not dwell

  On the gentle sound

  Of distant bell

  Cherish the day

  Sun and rain

  Tomorrow may not

  Come again

  ****

  Thunder Dance

  The fire's down to an ember by now

  The tent flaps open to encourage a breeze

  I'm almost asleep in the hot August night

  When a rumble of thunder rolls among trees

  Flashlight? Flashlight! My boots and my hat

  Lecturing myself once again

  Chucking the pack into the tent

  Feeling the first drops of rain

  "Always assume that it's going to rain"

  I've had the rule drilled in

  But I'm out here doing my flash-dance again

  Lessons dripping off of a glistening skin

  Dry myself off, crawl over my stuff

  Zip the windows up tight

  Pledge to restructure my before-bed rules

  And wish the thunder goodnight.

  ****

  And Galaxies Slide By

  From space, you'd see the ragged line of dusk

  Sweep Pacific islands into dark

  And in the midnight blackness, too small to see

  My campfire makes a tiny, warming spark

  The flame leaps up, blinding me a bit

  The trees grown still, the branches silhouette

  The canopy of slowly turning stars

  And catch the moon within a sliding net

  The dawn's over Africa, still hours away

  Three bullfrogs in the swamp complain

  They pause to let Andromeda clear the hill

  And carelessly disturb this velvet world again

  This September night, below the speckled dark

  Of seas of stars and endless deeps of sky

  I poke the fire and listen to the lake

  And sparks drift upward, and galaxies slide by

  ****

  Another Leaf, Not Yet At Rest

  On favored ground, the aspens grow

  Strangling out the weeds below

  The exist, or die, as best they can

  Without the benefit of plan

  Aspen leaves at random blow

  Caught by October winds, I know

  But I choose my place to spend the night

  Log
ic shows which ground is right

  I'm climbing the trail past Poplar Lake

  Well aware of the route I take

  I've counted every gram and can

  For I - well - I'm a thorough man

  Oh, I think, when I've done my route

  If someone were to puzzle it out

  This northern nomad would seem, at best

  Another leaf, not yet at rest

  ****

  Trail and I

  Trail and I

  Turn and bend

  God powers a world

  With no known end

  He finds my footprints

  Sees me, smiles

  As I happen on

  His chosen miles

  ****

  The Sepiatone Trail

  Warmer today.

  Last week it snowed, then

  Leafstripping rain

  And gusty wind.

  Only Saturday and sun

  Got us out again

  The Ganaraska traverses

  A sepiatone landscape

  On a leafslippery slope

  Colorcoated careful hikers

  Walk a whiteblazed trail

  In deep central Taupe

  Winter's hallway?

  Not November.

  But a clearing of the scene

  A cinema of stillness

  Woodland, hillside

  Revealed: cold, and lean.

  ****

  First Snow

  First snow caught us

  Near midpoint of the trail.

  A clumping flake tracked my lens

  Like some frozen ghostly snail

  Snow stuck to trees

  We searched for every blaze

  The planet disappearing

  In a downward streaming haze

  All around, the falling snow

  Dogged an atmospheric track

  Trailmarks on the pressure ridges

  A pack-cloud on its back

  In the car at last, we warmed

  Safer, if less dry

  And watched our route disappear beneath

  The footprint of the sky

  ****

  Crossing Winter Swamp

  The first thing you need to know about walking across Southern Ontario in February is

  There will be swamps in your way

  Whitecedar deadelm, dirty-rotten neverfrozen, deepsnow claustrophobic...

  "Swamps?" you say.

  Stride across three cornstubble fields and over an old sunlit fence to the sunwhite pasture

  The day a song. Pause earmuffed on the end of a ridge, inhaling panoramas of distant slope

  Your next field-and-hill is only a half crowflight mile away

  Including the woods. And the shortcut valley between. Shortcut? You hope.

  First step into the darkcedars swallows sunlight like a frog takes a fly. Your eyes adjust.

  A branch puts snow down your neck; another takes your hat

  You push swampheartward, the sky more open, but dead trees blocking every route.

  Slide over fallentree, sink into snowbank

  Look behind - your footprints waterfill. Hummockleap and junglegym your way

  To the greenbottom creek at the swamp center. Then

  If you can crosss it, fencebounce or leap, there's nothing but struggle till you break

  Through cedars to sunlight, to sunlight again.

  ***END***