The path into these woods begins
With tentative steps on bent grass
Widening for two to walk abreast.
The locomotives’ blaring tocsins
Grow infrequent as the years pass.
Few paths reach a place unaddressed,
Though many have been abandoned.
(Van Gogh’s led into wheat fields
Where all men’s souls are pardoned
With the harvest’s generous yields.)
It’s hard to walk on railroad ties,
The first too close, the second too far.
I walk into woods, perhaps in error,
On a path that offers no alibis.
