The way through the Woods

THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

The Way Through the Woods Kipling


Took myself out for a wander in the woods. After ceridwen introduced me to the paintings of Isaac Levitan yesterday I seemed to see his kind of "landscapes of mood" everywhere I looked, autumn has deepened since my last walk here, the paths are darker and wetter, the trees starker, the colours deeper. The whole wood was devoid of people, just me and the trees, at times I almost felt like an intruder at others as if everything, including me, was waiting for something to happen...which I suppose is true. Outside the wood I bumped into a chatty, dog walking lady who was surprised at my wandering about on crutches on "such a horrible day", above us the sun was trying to burn through the lowering cloud, around us was an explosion of reds, yellows, browns and greens, behind me was a quietly mysterious path vanishing into the dark wood...clearly we were experiencing the same day in very different ways. Maybe that's the trick.