(a project of NatureCulture)
Eagle Reserve Candace Curran - zoom1.jpg

Eagle Reserve / Candace Curran

Eagle Reserve Conservation Area

 

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.