They gated the road through the Loblolly Pine and White Walnuts,

the needle-bearing Hemlocks

with Woolly adelgids resting tightly on the underbelly of the pine needles.

Underneath the coppice

badgers roll at ease

While Beavers trim the hemlocks

that cover the forgotten path.

A path taken by overgrown Ostrich fern and switchgrass

the thin heaps of tree limbs aRray

lost in time; forked off at the train tracks and

rolling James River.

Decades have passed

and with them

the stretching of etched romance

carved in the Beech tree trunks.

I longed for something I could never come back from.

Something that gave spirit in the midst of despair

and the essence of bliss at the summit of my own utopia.