our touch upon the land
I walk in piedmont woods
that have known people for centuries,
by what people cut down of them,
by what people allowed of them to persist,
I walk in forests that feel old and constant to us now
but are instead of what trees have to make
in between times of axe, clearing machine, logging and farm,
a book I read long ago argued to "read the woods,"
I learned of succession,
of cleared land turning into pine woods,
of hardwoods overshadowing and succeeding the pines,
beech seems to survive the best in the edges left to them,
the long history of people here can express itself
as subtle indentations within the surface of the land,
where people, animal, wagons passed often enough
that a sway by the trail remembers their life and travel,
yesterday I walked over such a memory on the land,
I read the trail sign
that took its reality back hundreds of years
as Indigenous people walked it,
named it "Fish Dam Road,"
our touch now is heavy on the land:
concrete, asphalt, rock foundations, buildings, yards,
our pet trees and bushes and grasses,
I love the soft memory upon the land
of an earlier peoples' living here before us,
who treated the land more
as if they were just visiting a friend,
rather than sculpting the world as if it is clay
and they are as God by the riverbank,
imposing his will with his shaping.
by Henry H. Walker
September 13, ‘26
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