A Secret World
Along a country road,
beyond the guard rail,
past the visible vines,
lurks an ancient jungle.
Most who travel pass
don’t have an inkling of
the depth of the danger—
this cliff so close by,
this mystery in their midst.
The steep-slanting ground
and lush vegetation
in quintessential green
drop, and drop again
to a long-forgotten brook
that one can only hear--
though perhaps by peering,
one can glimpse refracted light
sparkling from its surface.
After blithely flowing
through this lost world
of twisted roots and tree trunks,
the creek quickly merges
with the Quaboag River,
and, coming into normalcy,
loses some allure.
Another mystery calls from
this roughly hewn valley
(gouged out by ice sheets
and still too severe
for human encroachment).
More resonant than the birds
and deeper than the stream,
it registers in a region
somewhere in the soul.
Taking one by surprise,
this precarious paradise
suddenly feels familiar,
as though we’d been there once,
as though we all belonged there,
long, long ago,
before the last ice age,
in some primal place
before mills and industry,
before roads and rails.
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