“The Labyrinth” by Pauletta Hansel

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.                                  Cedars of Peace, Nerinx, KY

Three days in these woods
mostly watching the pattern
of light and cloud
against the ever-changing green
but once or twice a day
I rouse myself from reverie and walk
sometimes to the labyrinth
the ones who tend this place have made.
Trunks of saplings cut for the clearing
mark the path that circles in
toward a center, then away,
a weaving in and out and finally
to a place where three might sit,
though there is only me.
And as I walk I think about my life,
as I am always thinking—seldom is it
quiet inside my head though I am
trying now to hear the voice
of birdsong, wind that rattles through
the underbrush. Still, I know something
about metaphors and how there must
be both a symbol and the thing it stands for,
and the labyrinth
lays here as a symbol, surely,
one path in, and here and there
a tree limb falls and blocks your way;
often you are farthest from the center
when it seems that you might touch it;
sometimes the path that leads away
takes you to the place
you have been heading all along.
Here’s where it falls apart: there’s one
path in, the same one out again,
and nowhere in this life
do we depart as we have entered.
I think (remember, I am always
thinking) I’ll contemplate instead
the deer as they come crashing through
the woods beside my cabin porch,
no path that I can see—who needs
a path when wherever you are
is home?

-Pauletta Hansel

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