Hogan, Linda

Tracking

1. After a long season of rains
2. we followed the wild pig,
3. its hoofprints like small arrows
4. through dark moss and ferns,
5. to borrow its sharp-backed life
6. for a while
7. inside our own.
8.  
9. It pawed the wet ground
10. for milk-white potatoes
11. that filled themselves
12. beneath the ground.
13.  
14. In the dark forest it went,
15. where growing sticks
16. were sharp as the black,
17. wounded heart of brush,
18. where roads ended in fog,
19. where the first race of men
20. built walls of small, white stones
21. that have not fallen,
22. then vanished
23. into the dark center of things
24. that beats like a heart
25. unable to cry
26. back the old lives,
27. the uncertain lands and tongues.
28.  
29. We followed the tracks like arrows
30. into a cave
31. where the walls were wet and shining
32. but they did not come out
33. and no pig was there,
34. only cool emptiness.
35.  
36. We hoped it was not an angry ghost
37. or hungry
38. or lonely
39. but the damp black stones were shining
40. in there
41. and on the ceiling
42. were painted the green birds
43. that once lived
44. in the rain and the trees.
45.  
46. It was like the night
47. I woke beneath the river
48. and there was no way back to the forest
49. except to become a spring of clear water,
50. to fill myself
51. and make a new way
52. through the world.