Christine Andersen’s “Breaking the Rules” reveals the release and healing which can be found blooming and flowing in the wild places of the earth. Her liberating poem turns the old outdoorsy adage of “leave no trace” on its head, by highlighting all the personal burdens and emotional baggage she leaves behind on the trail like cairns. [“Breaking the Rules”] reflects my inclination toward finding meaning and peace outdoors,” Christine told The Dewdrop. “Wisdom is all around us when we open our eyes to see it.”
Breaking the Rules
There’s a rule in the woods.
Leave no trace of your passing:
Carry out what you carry in.
Today I carried sorrow
along the trail
heavy in my backpack,
volumes of disappointments,
left them in the river
where the water bends east
toward the sea,
sprinkled them like ashes,
what was left after
my dreams burned
to the bindings.
When you are young,
you have notions of how
your life will be.
And then there is what happens.
A Buddhist monk told me
I could walk in the Kingdom of God,
every day,
nirvana,
breathing in and breathing out,
sorrows disappearing.
I went into the woods
under the steepled pines,
my breath one with the wind
on the path to the water.
I left misery there.
Emerged lighter, free.
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who hikes the Connecticut woods daily, pen and pad in pocket, hound dogs at her heels. The outdoors inspires many of her poems. Her New England world with its changing seasons is rife with metaphor. Christine’s publications include the Comstock, Awakenings, Evening Street and Octillo Reviews, Dash, Glimpse, Slab, The Bluebird Word and Glassworks, among others. She was the 2023 winner of the American Writers Review Poetry Contest.
thanks for the introduction to Christine