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Ed Reiss

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The Retreat

The afternoon they let us out, I took
a track which cut through square and silent miles
of Forestry Commission land: a vast
plantation, acres of thick-set pines
which swallowed up the light.
The brittle brushwood disappeared
in darkness. If it held a mystery,
I didn't pierce its depth.

The track would sometimes widen -
foxgloves, brambles, grass;
It carried on past endless pines,
square and soundless miles.
It passed a rusting tractor,
then a largish pool or little lake:
the sort of gloomy place one keeps
returning to, expecting it to change.
And though it never does, some carry on,
until they find they've gone there
once too often
and can't drag themselves away.

I wondered what went on beneath
that stagnant surface. The pines went on
up to a ridge of ground-up stumps and limbs
thick-strewn across the spat-out earth.
I hurried back through square and silent miles,
which swallowed up the light.

That evening, when a monk enquired
How was your walk then, Ed?
I told him I went up the hill:
it took about four hours.
And he replied: I said
How was your walk then, Ed?

 

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