If the pandemic can be compared to a long and fretful hibernation, then this fresh, new April finds us tentatively, hopefully, stepping out into the world again. With an optimism tempered by awareness, we seek familiar paths, old haunts, new joys. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, indeed - and for that, this time, this spring, let us be thankful.

Chercher la Piste

By William Lenderking

In the quadrant, four directions beckon

teasing varied potentials:

studio, falls, orchard, deck…

I search for the path between memoir and possibility:

I thought first to walk the curving arm of the pond

to see the sticks I saw last winter gone -

suspended over the ice—sheathed in silver glaze,

bringing eerie stillness to the place.

Then I thought to find the ginseng patch

to search for the leaf that never yet showed.

But under my first step, a garter snake stirs

and slips into the moss

as if its languid pace were camouflage -

while elsewhere a raptor swoops a lightning loop

over an elusive dove.

And then it comes to me.

I receive all I need from here.

It is enough today to sit with friends,

filling up with afternoon.

William Lenderking is a musician, yoga teacher, blessed father, and consultant/psychologist, who uses his love of words and poems to bring soul into his life as often as possible. He is a frequent participant in Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air Poetry projects including the chapbook Paths Tracks Trails, in which “Chercher la Piste” first appeared.