A little poetry

It happens more than you'd ever know. You get off a trailhead, and there is a stick that someone has used as a staff. Propped on a fencepost. Waiting for someone else to pick it up.
In Wyoming, it was no different. After 60 miles on trail, the last trailhead out and there was this chunk of lodgepole pine. Just aching for a new person to pick it up and amble.

So I wrote a poem about it.

Sticks
Just an old stick propped up on a fencepost,
stripped of its bark, naked.
Left there by a someone,
who dared to walk in woods,
cool, dark, mysterious.
A stick of lodgepole pine,
chosen carefully as a staff.
To aid the adventurer in a pursuit,
to amble in quiet woods.
Sweat and grime from the hiker’s hand
darkened the tawny wood,
like resin on baseball bats.
It’s pointed end mashed flat,
with each step
on a path
of dirt and gravel.
And when the grand adventure was over,
a walk in the woods complete.
The staff that had aided its finder,
to journey deep into canyons of granite,
its walls splashed with pine and alder,
became obsolete.
Placed on a wooden fence gone gray with age.
To wait for the next adventurer.
The next walk into woods.