To walk where wolves
this morning wandered;
a moment ne’er to shrug nor squander;
a blessing in the woods from God
to softly trek where wolves have trod.

Bushwhacking the woods
and stomping through snow
in my moose leather mukluks.

A fresh dusting
from this morning
over hard crust
from days before.
The woods seem dead and empty;
but they are not.
The statements I punctuate
through the crust
are surrounded and crossed
by other stories
written in the fresh powder
by authors unseen.

I see a deer had wandered here
and even lay here last night
and then got up
and had a brief
drop of relief
before departing
early this morning.

I see a fox had,
in a smooth and elegant line,
swiftly glided past this plane.
and then went straight back again
from whence she came.
Apparently she did not
find whatever it was
that she sought.

I see a grouse
walked with feet crossed
and wandered
and meandered
and circled
and stumbled
in a seemingly pointless pursuit
so that it can only be assumed
that this poor bird had consumed
some seriously over-ripened fruit.

I see a mouse or vole
and his story was penned
with a scampering trail
but it came to an end
at the base of a hole.
His story
stopped violently
where the swish
of owl wings
brushed the snow
and picked up
where the rodent left off.
It seems that mastered skill
is no match for raw talons.

I see
the tracks
atop a lodge
where a little master builder
had summited the rubble he had piled
to pause
and to view the flooded, frozen ruin
that he had caused
on that pond
and he rested on his paws to ponder
if every act of construction
requires a level of destruction
and if every act of deconstruction
allows the birth of something new.
But who am I kidding?
This isn’t something on which he wood chew.
This isn’t a concern his conscience might log.
He’s just surviving.
He isn’t contriving an opinion.
He doesn’t give a dam
about fate.
At any rate
I think
he felt
how nice it would be
to sit on his house.
He left his tracks
and that inspired me.

And so are the stories
left written in snow:
We can think and assume
but we don’t really know.
Our forensics
and deductions
can tell basic facts.
but imagination
tells the stories
when looking at tracks.

The brittle pages of authors passed
hang limp and dead, decayed and rotten
Until a breath, a breeze that passes
resurrects a life forgotten
So these synthesizing sheets of past
may speak again with life begotten.

on hikes with Dad
and he would quiz me
on plants and trees
and he would show me
some ways to play
like my favorite
which I still do today:

to take a stick, a tiny twig
and pop a zit
one of those pitch-filled pockets
on the skin of a balsam fir
and coat the tip
of the stick
as if it were
a little torch
and place it in the lake
and wait a sec
then watch it zoom
like a matchstick motorboat rocket
with a rainbow-colored flame behind it
and watch it zoom
forward with gusto
with no rudder,
fully free
until it slows
and its oily tail
brittles
and fizzles
on the surface
leaving only
a trace
of its
trail.

a short
moment of joy
but renewable
renewable
for as many twigs
as there are in
the forest.

so sometime soon
when he can walk
I will show my son
some ways to play
and I will quiz him
on plants and trees
and I will teach him
about balsam boats
and by those moments
day by day
in those moments
of simple fun
my dad will get
moments
one by one
and in those moments
my dad will get
to go on hikes
with his grandson
that
he never met.

-published 2017 edition of Spring Thaw! Itasca Community College

-published summer 2018 edition of Great Northern News