There’s no present like the time

    
Annie walked those paths    
with painstaking accuracy    
spearing her cane into mud.    
   
She wouldn’t be crowded,    
refused it in fact    
   
even nearby cows    
gave her plenty of room    
as she strode up that hill    
swinging her stick    
from side-to-side    
determined to avenge    
the world’s gloom.    
   
Once    
she snagged new pants    
on a barbed wire fence,    
a neatly torn ‘v’    
on the back of her thigh.    
   
Annie was furious —    
   
“you’re telling me    
my heart pumps me    
all the way up here    
and my Rohan strides    
are the first thing    
to fucking die?”    
   
   
   
In all honesty    
I didn’t know    
what to tell her.    
   
   
   
Some people hike,    
others soak in the view    
baptising themselves    
in a dirt-stained logic;    
an old ritual of presence    
that speaks to them,    
through them.    
   
   
   
Poets.    
   
Poets    
can be like that too.