Three Poems for Eagle Reserve and Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust
by Candace R. Curran
Eagle Reserve Conservation Area, part of the Mount Grace Land Trust, offers three trails for hiking, fishing and birding with a pond for canoeing or kayaking: the David H. Small Community Trail at 55 Winchendon Road is an accessible, 0.3 mile trail to the water with a viewing platform; Peninsula Trail, 70 Winchendon Rd. Royalston is a short, scenic hike, 0.5 miles through woods surrounded by a rare floating bog and open water; the nearby Stone Road Trail, 1/4 mile hike can be accessed through a hayfield and woods, one quarter mile off Stone Road. I have yet to find the hidden doorway, but I will.
“Various Bog Monsters” is a poem in a collection resulting from a visit to Peninsula Trail in the Eagle Reserve Conservation Area, Mount Grace Land Trust in Royalston, MA, one of the trails surrounding a 139 acre Spruce-Tamarack forest and a pond with a patchwork floating bog. A wildlife refuge for pied-billed grebes, heron, mergansers and rare golden eagles sent my companion and I searching. We were surprised to encounter a different species in our visit in the autumn of 2020.
What better time, if you could put it that way, to take an adventure into wood, wildlife, water and clean bright air. The pandemic of 2020 sent many of us out seeking better vistas, meditation and poetry. How thankful I am to have the opportunity to adopt the Eagle Reserve Conservation Area and to the Mount Grace Land Trust for adopting me.
Candace R. Curran
Jan, 2021
Various Bog Monsters
Eagle Reserve’s Peninsula Trail, Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust
70 Winchendon Rd., Royalston, Massachusetts
Parking across from the farmhouse a mob of pinheaded
Far Side guinea hens Charge “Watch out for the rooster!”
a farmer grins from the door and we scramble hustling past
comical football-shaped fowl herded by a bully rooster
to arrive at trailhead presenting us with a late autumn bog
a still life walk to land’s end beaver lodges looking like empty
rentals dotting the perimeter a trickle from the opposite shore
leaking the location of their dam a surround of pines
point skyward loll on the ground pencil chewed others
stand charred where lightning lit the narrow path and oh this
clear cold oxygen the sun going down beginning hypnosis
where has it gone the afternoon white specks falling on
needle carpets disappearing we seek hibernation a nap
shall we just sleep here until spring-kissed wake to a new
soundscape the snipe’s winnow a pumper-lunk of bitterns
the bother and bite of tiny insects their whine and whir
we walk instead the plank a finger peninsula thin ice
etching water’s edge back where guinea hens as watch-dogs
sound ratchet up their two syllable staccato and a brash
red-headed rooster hackles up runs fence between us
Breathtaking
Beneath a brilliant ceiling on a new snow of fallen stars
we are sent one by one down the trail into thick woods
swallowed in the opening ten of us with masks and boots
hats and mittens socially distanced entering a crisp silence
one foot in front of the other one two three four five a broken
string of pearls a meditative walk alone together hypnotic
sleepwalkers losing our minds in nature’s prayer grounds among
a woven press of paws and tails white on white to the wooden
bridge a stand of evergreens six seven arriving at the observation
deck at the edge of winter’s tundra the frozen expanse of a
tamarack bog the emptiness spread out before us eight nine ten
we are crows brought to something shiny alive to that treasure of
having lost ourselves to the refuge within we coax ghost breath out
before inviting each new breath in before restringing the necklace
one through ten to arrive back at the beginning with a bell ringing
peace a different wilderness from where we all began
Stone Road Trail
Head for the trail shaped like a bluebird sitting on a branch
one quarter mile down Stone Road to arrive at the hayfield
to walk along a neatly stacked stonewall across a wide open
flowered field to trailhead and there look up the blue blaze
the key to entering a sun speckled woods filled with the who’s
who of birdsong walk the rock and needle path unwinding
under an evergreen ceiling of boughs and the sweet smell of
clarity the pure oxygen you had forgotten existed to that bright
opening where sky and it’s clouds have fallen into the wetlands
and a goose and gander their goslings see you before you see them
effortlessly slip away and so do you falling into a peace that fills
and loosens the strings of your bones letting everything go and you
didn’t know you didn’t even know you were so tightly strung
Candace Curran is founder and organizer of collaborative word-and-image multimedia exhibitions including INTERFACE, and Exploded View. She was twice named western Massachusetts Poet’s Seat Laureate. Curran’s publications include, Bone Cages, an anthology, and Playing in Wrecks (Haley’s Press), as well as journals Raw NerVZ, Meat For Tea, and Silkworm. Compass Roads, an anthology edited by Jane Yolen. She engineers word and image on the Buckland side of the Iron Bridge in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts in the heart of beautiful Western Mass.
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust (mountgrace.org) benefits the environment, the economy, and future generations by protecting significant agricultural, natural, and scenic lands and encouraging land stewardship in northern and central Massachusetts. The core strength of Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust is our focus on completing significant land protection projects and actively stewarding the conservation areas we own. Our effectiveness is a function of our “just do it,” no-frills approach and responsiveness to the diverse conservation ethics held by the landowners of our region.