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
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