Stony Path

Kathryn Jones

September 4, 2022

I could have trod up the gravel road

after feeding the horses this morning; 

instead, I took the stony path up the hill

to admire lichen-clad rocks and long morning shadows,

to hear dried grass whisper to the wind,

to feel feathery seedheads tickle my legs,

to look up and see wispy white fingers caress cerulean sky,

to see white-tailed deer, so reddish in summer, turning gray, 

to sense that autumn is coming, finally –

and I am part of it all, 

a sojourner in this wild perfection

gathering moments of peace. 

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.