Sometimes I step out of the wood
on to a straw-covered path:
a warm wind brushes the hill
Sometimes the woodland ways are too steep,
and the square, unbedded stones
bite into my sole
Sometimes I go on and
sometimes I go back
looking for a place so thin that
even I cannot mistake it
Always there is
the witching wood, and
I am knot-lost,
confronted by an angel who knows
the time and the place
and will uncover me
Feeling not despair but desire,
I recognise boneland,
the place of transition
where the turbulence of time
ebbs like a lackadaisical tide
and leaves me stretched
helplessly on the bare beach
holding on to godliness
but surrounded by demons
and the fishes of galilee:
trodden on,
transformed
I wrote this poem after walking a footpath near Holt and visiting a bookshop