Connie Soper
New Trail
We marry geometry with geography, angle slopes for a proper trail. Our city hands scatter pebbles, bending them into a blueprint curve between the firs. We are pleased with our work, and the work is pleasing. Muddy gloves, damp knees, the kind of ache that feels good later. This season of green never fades, an understory sprawling ferns, tangle of roots, blackberries that won’t be tamed. We rearrange the forest with our tools—chop, dig, tamp, Through scrim of fog, the hillside purples foxglove. Branches we clip open the sky a little more. For now. Toppled logs soften into moss and bark, finding purpose to their windfall. Side by side, we hunch to the task, thwack thwacking this little patch of planet. An inch, a foot, a path into a wilder place.
dusting of darkness something shivers, there
About the Author
Connie Soper is an Oregonian who likes to hike the trails and walk the beaches of her native state. Many of her poems are inspired by these experiences and have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, One Art, and elsewhere. This is her first published haibun.