Trail Marker Trees Poem by Raymond Farrell

I remember
As a teenager
Hiking the trails
Along the old maple ridge
Meandering paths
Trod for centuries
By the Ojibwa people
Native to the area
At various intervals
I saw maple trees
With a strange bend
In their trunk
When I think
Of the stately maple
I envisage it
With a straight trunk
But these trees
Looked like some Herculean being
Had purposefully
Made a bend in their trunk
Year later
I read how native peoples
Bent young saplings
Into trail marker trees
Creating an ancient type
Of land and water navigational system
As well as a means
Of denoting ceremonial sites.