Dearly: New Poems

by Margaret Atwood

Walking in the Madman’s Wood Walking in the madman’s wood over the disquieted dry shushing leaves in early spring. The madman loved this wildland once, before his brain turned lacework. Must have been him (when?) who put this round stone here, topping the mossy oblong. Mine. And all the tin can lids and wooden squares, rough-painted red and nailed to trees to mark his line: mine, mine, mine, mine. I shouldn’t say that cancelled word: madman. Maybe lost his mind? No, because we don’t have minds as such these days, but tiny snarls of firefly neural pathways signalling no/yes/no, suspended in a greyish cloud inside a round bone bowl. Yes: lovely. No: too lonely. Yes. The world that we think we see is only our best guess. This must have been his shack, collapsed now, where he’d—what? Come sometimes and sit? Hepaticas wrenched up by sun, brown tufts of hairbrush grass, the toppled stove, the wild leeks so glossy they look wet, the soft log frilled with mushrooms. You could get waylaid here, or slip amazed into your tangled head. You could just not come back.