- Grey mud from headwaters
- Frosts my shoelace
- What’s it doing there?
- It should be
- Deep under the redwood’s roots
- Holding the water in
- Holding the moisture I saw
- Daubed in nestled clouds on the valleys
- Nestled like snuggled blankets
- Wrapping what’s left of gentle forests.
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- Mud from headwaters
- Clings to the pattern in my shoes
- What’s it doing there?
- The old logging road
- Silty green like the Yukon River
- Was not so muddy as I imagined.
- They need the rain winter hasn’t brought.
-
- For two hours we hiked
- Through devastation, huge and ancient
stumps
- Ringed by teasel, pampas,
- A host of Eurasian invasion scourge
- That roads bring
- To deplete.
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- Mud from Headwaters spattered on my jeans
- Did not come from the forest
- But from the road that cut it.
- Exposed, I carried it home to show
- How deep the damage runs.
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- Jenny McBride
- Earth First Journal March-April 2002