Walking, speaking

Because the world is an old story, and a new story nothing more than another halting walk into the traveled maze of things (as here it's a twisting path between birches, through meadowsweet to where the rail fence edges the stream, rapid, rocky, stuttering off in pursuit of the deep, clear dream it dreams of itself), I, who turn here with you for the first time into the green phrase of an afternoon that will not repeat itself, tell you that I am happy on this path, in the ring of these mountains where any morning now, any day, patches of ochre on the hills will flare like windblown embers into sloping sheets of flame to tinge this distant walking, this delicate splice of hands, bodies, this small amazement of a human voice.