SHEENA Blackhall finds all sorts of surprising things when she goes down to the woods of Aberdeenshire.

Her piece comes from her latest pamphlet, Shards: Poems and Tales in Scots and English (Pubished by Lochlands, Maud, at £3).

THE WOOD HAS MANY DOORS

The wood has many doors

Walk in. Bring your empty day and fill it with trees

Bend down on your two stiff knees

Stuff mushrooms or cones into a dusty bag

The owl has drawn the blinds on his wide eyes

His window of air will open again in moonlight

Firs are talking in riddles, dropping their needles

Onto the orange and tawny trampled path beneath

By the loch, a heron meditates on fish

In his grey Zen cloak, one leg frozen in zazen

Nothing is happening, nothing that you can see

Ants reshuffle a pack of leaves

On the edge of your eyes' periphery

Are you surprised how old and fat you have become?

Are you surprised how life has leaked away unnoticed?

Stay. Leave. Linger. It's all one to the stone

By the badgers' trail. The clouds dissolve

And reassemble, ever the same but different