The sun pale this late autumn afternoon, as though filtered
through gauze. Tea-stained tints of meadow grass and sedge
border the path. Now and then, I run my fingers through rushes,
silky as a child’s hair. The land has been given back to itself―
returned to its instinctive sprawl, its mossy, hummocked earth,
its vernal pools. Winterberries in the low shrubs, cardinals
dotting the sycamores―vivid against this faded autumn palette.
The sharp-toothed gears of the wetland have paused. Its industry now
is shelter―the pond snail burrows into soft earth, closes her door
to the coming cold; garter snakes twine in their hibernaculum.
Still, dormant life hums under my tread, like a promise. Nothing,
nothing but nature fanning out, digging in, cycling into what comes next.
This poem first appeared in Embracing Wetlands: The Edith Chase 2024 Poetry Anthology.
—
Barbara Sabol lives in Akron, Ohio, close to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, whose trails she knows by heart. She was named Ohio Co-Poet of the Year for her sixth book, Watermark: Poems of the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889 (Alternating Current Press, 2023.) Other honors include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Her forthcoming book, Mapping the Borderlands: Haibun and Tanka Prose, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2025.
