Walking The Land

WALKING THE LAND - Kevin Ireland

The hardest move on the worst journey

is the first step you place inside

an earlier footprint in the mind,

and the useless baggage you have to dump

along the way is always the burden

you thought you have left behind

The marks that you intend to leave to blaze

the route, in case you need to double back,

signal neither place nor stage:

they are simply new daubs on the old signs 

of journeys taken down the worn tracks

of some earlier age.

There is no other way but to go tapping along

with a twisted stick, stumbling on rut

and stone, as you walk the land,

with your sole guide the stars, and the map

etched in the creases of the calluses

cupped in the palms of your hands.