Congested heat slams into my body. I drown in silence; all movement seizes. Someone has pressed the pause button! Trees remain with crowns bent over water. Yellow lilies paint freckles on the perfect mirror image. A silver-grey sculpture blends into the reed. Elegant neck and focussed eyes betray liveliness. Yet, not even the fish are moving. Suddenly, songbirds burst into action. A cacophony of sound selected freeze frame. Everything else remains motionless. Even the damselflies are glued to the reeds. I force myself to take a step, In sluggish slow motion. And nothing happens, no sound escapes my step. I am caught betwixt and between, In this here midsummer night’s dream.
The wicker basket hangs vacant off my back. The leather straps move loosely across my shoulders. I am slumped over the hollow pit in my stomach, As if to protect the rising ball of fury. Gentle fingers stroke the broken limbs, Torn stumps of frayed wood-fibre. Sap bleeds with silent screams from a dozen wounds. A sob violently ripples through my body. Hot tears fall onto cold wilting leaves. “Leave no trace.” Opa* taught me. “Your foraging should go unnoticed.” I bent down and pick up a broken digit. Before I survey the clump of damaged Rowans. Not even green berries are left here, Leaves and limbs carelessly discarded. The disregard a visceral vice around my skin. Eventually the ball of fury escapes as hot curses: “May this pain return to you seven fold!” This is not foraging. Hands on rough bark, salt mixes with sap.
They stand guard, tall presence, evanescent permanence. Centuries, and decades, carried them through storms and heat, snow, and hail. A haphazardly thrown together wood pigeon nest visible now that the canape of leaves is thinning. I can feel their hum, soundtrack of a silent silver-lighted evening. Maple, birch, beech, elm, ash, rowan. Scots pine with her gnarly branches towers over hawthorns’ crooked and knotted bodies, arms reaching to shape elder futhark runes. Othala holds all. Twisted limps, adorned by thorns and blood red pearls. Unlike the elder striving up and out as straight as can be, the last of their night-sky velvet booty beckons the tentative forager. Elfen ears such bright spots of orange early in the year, are floppy dachshund shaped and coloured now—just not as fluffy.
I breathe-in autumn and the ever present pulse, breathing out tension and arrhythmia. Step by step by step. Breath, by breath, by breath. Pause. Exhale more. And more, until the last of this breath is gone. I gulp, swallow, drink the humid terpene laden air, the smell of petrichor heavy on my tongue, my lungs expand deeper, wider. Don’t pant against the tightness, just exhale—even further—until nought is left. And then trust, trust your body as the reflex demands expansion, of lungs, chest, diaphragm. Trust the breath of life, trust the guardians—producing oxygen on exhale—trust in your feed moving forward. Step, by step, by step. Breath, by breath, by breath.
*Elfen ears are mushrooms not sure what their actual name is this is the name I know them by ** There is indeed a hawthorn whose branches are shaped like the rune Othala along the path
Poetry by Nathalie 