Winding About Below The Leaves

They appear for no apparent reason in the woods,
They sometimes bury themselves,
Level with the ground and are difficult to see.

Sometimes several loom up, large and long, hiding below the leaves,
And they twine amongst each other, merging and splitting, appearing and dissappearing, like strange, long eskers or indian mounds.
Streams and roads cut them abruptly, but they don't notice or care.

Up and down they go, following the landscape, but not too quickly: mounding up hugely when the land drops away, digging in when hills crop up.

Trains need gentle grades, you see.
Sometimes I imagine ghosts of the engines that used to run on these old railbeds, chuffing among the trees.

Life is a bit like these railbeds perhaps. Sometimes solitary, other times not, sometimes prominent, other times low and humble. Most raibeds, once abandoned, become part of the landscape, weather away, or are mined for their rock. Some railbeds never fall from use, while others may lie sleeping for decades even a century before someone finds value in them and decides to take that path again.

May your path be level and take you through pleasant places, and may it guide, support and inspire those who come after you, through the landscape of life.