Into the Clearing

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by Laura Parker Roerden

All day long I had lain in the grass and waited for the sun
to reach the clearing, though it never did come. The dew

from the morning had left my hair damp to the touch;
my heart aching for something I had never expected to miss.

I knew these woods to be vernal wetlands, but I had forgotten
just how much shade can be thrown by the trees that

surround it. Yet all it takes is an unwillingness to thwuck in
the muck, past the skunk cabbages and stinging nettle to

miss out on the thicket of grass, soft like a bed, a cool reprieve
from the summer sun. As a child, this spot had been where I’d

have picnics in the daisies and bluettes, which swayed so low to
the ground as if fighting off sleep. I knew a rock that acted

like a sun dial and pointed at noon to a secret location of lady
slippers–fragile pink moccasins–that I could imagine fairies

wore to silence their footsteps like pine needles buffeted mine.
The edges of the field were where the remnants of a long ago

stone wall had fallen, once marking a pasture or home site, and
later simply held space in a child’s imagination, a canvass

of clouds, whose angle of reflected light told her the time.
The time is late now, so I have to go. In the clearing today

stands a house, built by my brother. He had to go too,
taking his place among the moss in a family cemetery with my

parents, grandparents and great grandparents.
But I visit my brother in the clearing when I can

by taking that walk into the dank, smoldering woods and
listening as birds call out my arrival as if nothing has changed.

Laura Parker Roerden is the founding director of Ocean Matters and the former managing editor of Educators for Social Responsibility and New Designs for Youth Development. She serves on the boards of Women Working for Oceans (W20) and Earth, Ltd.

 

Published by Laura Parker Roerden

Laura Parker Roerden shares a love of what nature can teach us. Writer, public speaker and supportor of youth to boldly know and save the wilds. She is the founding director of Ocean Matters and a fourth generation farmer and thinks today’s young people are reason to be hopeful about the many environmental problems facing us. She lives on a family farm in Massachusetts with her husband, three boys, and an assortment of fruit trees and farm animals.

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