Scarlett Wampus said:
Since I have a Freudian eye I spotted it
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but to pitch tent by a rushing stream! OOOH NO!
I'm certainly can't argue with you. The association is perfectly legitimate eventhough I didn't consciously make it while writing out the poem. The images in all my poems, and often the word choices themselves, are typically intuitive: They bubble up from who knows where. Ironically, I'm sometimes the last to see an obvious association.
The only thing I will say about the image is that I believe both a sexual and a non sexual interpretation are equally valid. It's neither one nor the other, but both.
I liked the sense of dynamic movement and exploration in this one. Associations with natural beauty always work for me too.
Thank you, Scarlett! You might be interested to know that both of the women the poem is dedicated to are nature enthusiasts. For instance: I can hardly recall a day I've seen Becky in casual clothing without her wearing boots suited to hiking, although I'm sure she does wear other foot garb at times. She's just as much at home in a wilderness campsite as I am in my living room. So, the association of natural beauty to her is a very easy one to make.
I wonder though, how is such a person like a trail to the bears?
That's a very good question. Some years ago, Becky introduced me to one of my favorite hikes, a wilderness area that begins about 15 miles South of me called Aiken Canyon. There are two main trails through it. The first makes a big loop so that you come out where you started. The second branches off the first and runs West into the Rocky Mountains.
At the trail head is a chalk board where hikers will leave useful notes for those who come after them. One day, I was preparing to hike the main loop when I noticed someone had left a note of spotting a bear a mile or so down the West trail.
There are thousands of bears still left in Colorado, Scarlett, but it is rare for any one person to see one. They tend to go the other way when they hear the noisiest thing in the forest coming, that is a human. So, when I saw a bear had been spotted down the West trail only a couple hours before, I decided to have a look for myself.
I had never hiked the West trail before. And as I got a ways down it, things began to get stranger and stranger. For one thing, the sounds changed. The air was hushed. The tail entered a thicker forest. I felt there was an appreciable sense of mystery growing on that trail, something wild, perhaps even dangerous, but certainly mysterious.
It came time to turn back, and I did, and I saw no bears that day, but the image of that trail was in my mind when I wrote of those women as being "a trail to bears".
I don't know if that entirely explains the image, but it's perhaps a start.
