My steps are not the bear’s,
lumbering through forest ferns,
pressing their weight,
clawing bark, reaching berries,
nor are they, thin prints of fox,
arrow to the wind, swiftly scouting
land for mice and moving food.
I am not like wolf, masking my
hunt around stands of trees
and brush, waiting for prey.
Who am I, daring to travel in
this moss covered land, that my
kind have separated from,
without asking questions.
I know nothing.
How do I walk so as not to disturb,
listen so that I do not disrupt,
sit quietly so that all creatures
and plants around me,
are free to fly and run, sense
that my presence is not a threat.
That I will not squash
partridge berry under my feet,
take a birch to the ground,
leave burning coals from
a warming fire.
And like any home that I
enter, not dismantle the
woodland altars that have
spirited the caves and
spaces with their grace.
—
Jesse LoVasco (she/her) is a poet, visual artist and herbalist residing in unceded land of both Anishnabe in Michigan and Abenaki in Vermont. She studied poetry at Vermont College. Her book Native was published in 2020. She was a participating fellow of Nature Culture’s Writing the Land Project, with poems in the anthologies Windblown l and Migration and Home, as well as a yearly contributor and facilitator for PoemCity in Montpelier, VT.
