Deck the Halls Poems
1.
Preacher’s Grove
for John Stern
I carried an axe, a whetstone and two files,
not sheaves of poetry but drop-forged steels.
Sixteen, I could have tramped for fifty miles
if not for the blood pooling at my heels.
Mole foam was uninvented, and my boots
were brutal. All my scouts were little brutes,
scraping their knees while tripping over roots.
Recall an earlier day: at age eleven
I shouldered my enormous haversack,
some twenty pounds (the sleeping bag weighed seven.)
The bigger boys carried the heavier loads,
far more than any Tenderfoot could pack.
All of the paths we hiked were logging roads
to reach a campsite I recall as heaven.
It was a grove of virgin Norway pine.
Older, I’d hike alone there, afternoons
when I’d no map and compass course to line,
no Pioneering Merit Badge to teach,
only a switchback trail, a steep incline,
only the chorus of the distant loons—
and all the listeners I longed to reach.
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