A Path

Along the new trail, built by no one I knew, acorns had fallen by thousands, more than enough to leave creatures dazed by too much fortune. Conkers have tumbled among them, each experimentally chipped and then rejected by some set of tiny teeth. Hazel nuts were better, it seems. Should an adder pass en route to denning, amid this rich mast, amid this late fall of goldened leaves of ash and beech, I might merely step aside, unalarmed as any fattened squirrel.

Across the pasture, I remember, past the partly shaded ferns, cowslips, bluebells, buttercups of spring and summer, where falling water, catkin-patterned, drowned out the cygnet's cry in an otter's teeth (witnessed by a kingfisher, two low-flying larks and a heron), a willow had leaned to hide that tiny sorrow and also shade a loafing spotted newt.

The hill behind, where bees sought nectar of a kind from sunburnt heather, swept up to a copse of oak, wrapped in a druid's dream of mistletoe and ivy. There I had paused for dandelion wine.

Perhaps the trail will help some find this place. My children, do not forget there is a world.