by Steven Dale Davison

The trail maker —
I want to meet her.

She swings me ‘round the boles
of the bigger beeches,
then along a slope
with skinny naked trunks
and thin winter sunlight
through the open understory
slanting just so,
in late afternoon.

I love the little curve she made
that skirts the stone and fern there
at the bottom of the bank.

She took me through a meadow
thick with thistle and sumac
and the smell of goldenrod,
then up into the rock formations,
entered from the finest angles
for surprises in the mazes.

I want to warn her:
that orange trail
is rank with savage rose —
one year, maybe two, before
it’s strangled by the thorns.
But I suppose she knows.

She goes where the tanagers nest.

In addition to poems, Steven Dale Davison has written several plays in verse that were produced for webcast and other plays in both verse and prose. Mr. Davison has also written both short and long fiction and has published a number of nonfiction works. Mr. Davison worked for twenty years as a journalist and professional writer in the private sector and was awarded a writing scholarship by Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.