One

It hasn’t rained in a while. I hope it does soon. The earth needs the rain and besides, all the clouds and winds and strange atmospheric things that come with the rain are more interesting and inspiring than a sunny day. 

You know though, come to think of it, the meadow, the place where much of this writing’s events and thoughts are set, is rarely completely dry. Its grasses and earth seem to retain some moisture, somehow. It is sagacious that way. I know because my shoes, most of the time Converse, high top yellow and regular blue (both faded now), get wet there. 

Today there were a few souls along the path, coming back as they were, but after I passed them, not many. Not any at all in fact. Let me give some context to the place. It’s after towns and highways and even roads. In fact, the road ends at the beginning of the forest, having turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt. 

There is a public forest to the right. It attracts dog walkers, hikers, joggers, bike riders, photographers, walking groups, and sometimes homeless people. Sometimes there is even a type that is hiding out from something like the law or people in general, a type that stays in the woodlands when others would not in parts where others don’t go. 

But to the left is a private forest. This is the one that leads to the meadow. The meadow is like a golden treat at the end of a journey, a beautiful goal if ever there was one. There are two definite and visible No Tress passing signs at its two entrances. People obey them. But some lucky souls like me have permission from the old farmer that owns the land, to go there. 

Two 

There is something else, something bordering on the esoteric or gnostic. It’s insight seen while driving to that entrance of the forest that leads to the meadow. Since it’s rural, there are many sprawling properties. Many affluent homes, the new ones, are grey and without character. They just copy one another. It’s doubly sad, because of the copying but also what’s being duplicated. Not a thing in it all looks unique or soulful, not even a special trellis or bit of coloured brick, sounding fountain, or flowing garden. 

But…I noticed that some places have older homes, from a time of wooden porch and red brick and chimney. From an era of grounded-ness and more honest atmosphere. And beyond rain barrel and sunflower, past stained perimeter fence and sometimes no fence at all, I could see a pond and little forest back there. They would contain a different area-atmosphere. Mysterious, even in the plane light of day under the clean azure sky. It’s as if the prose of the world turned into poetry, then. Trees. Leaves. Branches. What was back there? I wished I could know. I longed to go. But I knew none of them, not one of those owners. I supposed that they took the magic for granted, these sprawling old lands. And how could they not, if they indeed did? It was their reality. Lucky ones, that’s what they were, however hard working, they were still lucky. All I could do was drive by. Being an empath, I could just feel the areas even for moments and from a distance. I loved it. They were as if containing portals or vortexes to other worlds magical and monumental. 

Often I imagine the coyote dens, the travelling foxes, the large porcupines. I knew there must be deer that wait and watch near there, because I had seen them. Maybe there were types of insects rare or not even discovered by scientific or poetic eyes. The scents of the flora. The sounds of the rains at night. The woodpecker or Bluejay. Strange snakes representing the kundalini energy. The kind summer dew morning. The autumnal hued leaves when that highly spiritual time came, the veil between worlds thinning. Halloween, Thanksgiving. Then some string of electric lights for Christmas. And much more. How come I couldn’t have a place like that? What a caretaker and curator I could be, surely would be. Ah well, I would think and sigh it away with a brief smile. What was meant to be, would be. 

Three

Well, the path. What of it? And then the meadow itself of course. Go past the signs and there are two options, no, three. The top after heading left has itself stationed on the uppermost part of a long and winding valley. It is safe but the side does become steep if you go off the regular way. Deer cross there sometimes and other times hide in the bushes by the thick trees. Wild berries grow and there are snake holes, many sticks, and lichen and moss. The one grouse I had, only one slight one, is that there are very few rocks or boulders. I don’t know if they were removed or just never there. It would be nice to see some cinematic view of the lands through time to note small and large changes, to watch the valley and its surrounding habitat move, grow, glisten, and weather or bloom. 

In the middle down the way is, well, the middle path, thicker on the sides especially of late for some reason. More raspberries, a hybrid berry of some sort, half black and half red. Many birds and numerous chipmunks running for cover at the sound of things or else up trees to safety, talking to their friends. The trail is bumpy in parts but also serene. So uninhabited by human presence. Mostly pristine and untouched. Those are the real ‘moments,’ nature lovers look for,- the meditative and quiet, the Zen-like phenomenon of being present amidst a type of natural mystical sense…

And the more main path, it’s old Oak trees and some Evergreens, straight for a while but also winding along. Mushrooms and pebbles, good old dirt earth and sometimes the rain drops left on leaves after a night storm. Walk and walk and walk. See and be and have a certain amount of glee. Soon enough, part Pine and placid easy places,

going along there by the verdant canopy where bits of sun filter down through to say hello, will be the magnificent meadow waiting. 

Suddenly it can be seen through a frame of red sumac that reaches over both sides of the path arching to itself. Blue skies beyond. A green swath is cut all around and some ancient farm machinery wait in the middle like a token gesture, a nod to other decades. The sun lights everything then. Continue. A corpse of trees is waiting to the right. Birds fly in and out. Some to sing and some to speak their speech loquaciously and vigorously. 

Onward is a way to a lower area where chaga mushroom, rare and not known by many, grow on some birch streets in a certain stand of them. The blooming earth has overtaken an ancient access road where a bank robber is said to have abandoned a stolen car, then gotten away while hiding in barns for nights and running between forests and meadows under the light of the moon. Now such an old story, but there is an actual abandoned car from that time down there, and everyone, even straight and upright old timers, are rooting for him. Some have him escaping out all with the loot and somehow making his way to down to Florida. Maybe a personal dream projection from some old storyteller local. Maybe not. 

But drama, thoughts, and time come and go. The goldenrod and queens lace, impossibly tall, a refuge for myriad bugs and insects and the home of grasshoppers dragonflies and even the Praying Mantis, seem to stay. Tall and well-wrought in the clean air world. Every direction then is green and vast, open, and calm, pastoral and perfectly put. 

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Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet, writer, and photographer. His third compilation of prose poems and pictures, The Book of Love and Mourning, is forthcoming in autumn 2025.