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From the bedroom you can see
straight to the fringe of the woods
with a cross-staved gate to re–
enter childhood’s world:
------------------the pines
wait, dripping.
------------------Crumbling black–
berries, seized from a rack
of rusty leaves, maroon tents
of mushroom, pillars uprooting
with a dusty snap;
------------------as the bucket
fills, a bird strikes from the bushes
and the cleats of your rubber boot crush a yellow snail’s shell to a smear
on the grass
------------------(while the wind starts
the carrion smell of the dead fox
staked as warning).
------------------Seeing your former
self saunter up the garden path
afterwards, would you flinch,
acknowledging
------------------that sensuality,
that innocence?

-John Montague, 1966