Beech Forest Trail

In memory of Mary Oliver

She walked here often and early
before the day escaped the clouds
entering the woods on the boardwalk 
where chickadees, used to hand-feeding,
greet each passerby chittering and bouncing 
from branch to branch.

Then she, 
along the flattened dunes that once 
may have risen higher, 
traveled the gradually ascending trail 
slowly as always,
paying attention.

She followed the gnarly roots 
of ancient beeches that dug under 
bright green mosses and may have known
the pain of those whose smooth skin, 
gouged with the initials of impermanent souls,
still rose with dignity as their huge limbs wrinkled
as they bent and twisted skyward.

She was well acquainted with the other trees
oak, maple, hemlock, pitch pine and others.
I don’t know if she talked to them 
but if she did, they answered. 
She saw in the swampy shallows of Blackwater 
Pond, the cattails that burst and scattered 
their fluffy progeny across the pond in the fall,
the fox sunning on a bank in summer,
the turtle crossing the trail to lay her eggs,
the black snake winding through the grass 
thinking it can’t be seen.

I walk here now. 
Have you noticed? she asks me
and missing her,
I say, I have.



Carol A. Amato


My poetry has been published in Tiny Seed Journal, Smokey Quartz Journal, Mutual Muses Ekphrastic Exhibition, Cotuit) and others. I am a natural science educator and author of eleven nature books for children about misunderstood and threatened animals (Barron’s and John Wiley Sons).
Trails leading to trees are my  milieu.