Maggie Butt

Norwegian Wood & You See Him Coming

Cinderpath snakes down betweentrees

from top-of-mountain, zigzagging through birch-beside-spruce, rock-over-shale,

fern-under-bracken; fjord glimpsed below never climbing closer, its sparkledazzle

flashing hints of an outsidewood sunshineworld, miniature city with muss

of rooftops, cars which are firefly glints-of-light; while here is all dapplehush,

brook chirruping beside path, waterfalls triptumbling over ledges-boulders,

lapping moss-stain waist-high round treetrunks as if sea of verdigris had washed through

leaving lush as pasture-after-rain; and sometimes a shortcut, offtrack,

sharp-slithers down between treeroots, tempts us to downscramble, sliceoff a bend,

but we choose path-most-travelled, slower, take-your-time, lookaround route

and on next hairpinbend, in greenest-green heartwood, people before have built

dozens of cairns, smallstones heaped ontopof eachother, like faerytowers

or pebbles-on-graves, and we carefulchoose fingersmooth handweigh balance

our own, honouring those who went ahead in evergreen peace-of-the-wood.