[Editor’s note: we are very encouraged by the feedback we’ve received for Wondering Fair during its first week! We appreciate your comments and emails, and hope you’ll stick around. Some friends have also expressed the wish for a larger share of female contributors, so WF can voice better women’s perspectives and so it can witness to the ideal that God speaks through women and men alike. We wholeheartedly agree, and are looking for ways to incorporate more female voices. We also welcome guest articles; so speak up, ladies! In the meantime, here is a Luci Shaw poem as a weekend bonus.]

The ground is always there, witnessing
how you walk. You need light to travel
a dark path, and you need to travel light.
Otherwise the shadows that turn out to be
submerged boulders and roots will trip you,  
and your heavy pack will bear you down
into the hard anguish of gravel that is more
than your knees can bear. Even roadside dust
clings to your heels as if God is in
every fiber, a kind of mineral truth
present in every crystal of sand.

Gravity, and the possibility of falling,
will keep you aware. In the twilight you
come home from walking the dog in the woods
with the walk still clinging to you — twigs
and the stain of berries on your soles.
Each humus clod from the forest floor
answers back — another footfall. This is all
my handwork, he is saying. Stay with this mud,
this granite. Every other step you take
will be a revelation.

Luci Shaw