Author: courtneybosworth

The master walks with quiet, humble grace,

And seeks the truth where deeper questions lie;

No boastful words are spoken in this place

To lift his pride before the public eye.

He does not hoard the wisdom he has gained,

Nor hold the craft above another’s head;

But offers light where shadows once remained,

That others too may walk the path he tread.

Yet shallow minds will loudly claim the crown,

And peddle truth they never lived to know;

They seek the quick applause of all the town,

Content with all the pompous seeds they sow.

For wisdom never needs to shout its claim:

Only the empty play the expert’s game.

I am the quiet geography of eleven distinct terrains,

A tapestry woven from centuries of winter storms and rains.

I do not begin with my own first breath or the modern streets I see;

I am an ancient map redrawn, a living, breathing history.

Nearly a quarter of my heart beats in the English breeze,

Where Southeastern hills slope gently down to northwestern seas.

The East Midlands rise within my blood, a steady, grounding clay,

While the rugged cliffs of Devon and Somerset watch the fading day.

And from the West Midlands, a smoky, industrious thread is spun—

Four distinct English corners, resting quietly under a single sun.

The map shifts wide, across the rolling water’s foam,

To the Southern Germanic valleys that another part of me called home.

Through Northwestern Germany, the ancient forests softly speak,

Leaving a legacy of quiet strength, enduring and unique.

Turn north toward the horizon, where the colder currents blow—

I carry the silver light of Denmark, dancing on the snow.

And the deep, majestic pines of Sweden leave their enduring trace,

A Nordic resilience carved into the contours of my face.

Listen closely, and you’ll hear a wilder music start to rise,

From Central Scotland down to Northern Ireland’s stormy skies.

A Celtic, Gaelic stubbornness, a love for song and open space,

A fierce and beautiful longing that time can never quite erase.

Finally, the borders soften into the vast and open east,

Where the rhythm of the old world has never fully ceased.

In Northeastern Poland, where the amber rivers wind,

and across the broad North Central plains, the remnants that they left behind.

I am a map of the old brought into the new, a tapestry of ancestors I never knew.

She crosses the threshold in the dead of the night,

Claiming the corners where there is no light.

A phantom cadence, a low-whispered lease,

Holding me close in a desperate peace.

I surrender the keys to her silent command,

Following footsteps across the dark land.

No defenses to build, no verdicts to move—

In the shadow she brings, I have nothing to prove.

But the morning arrives, and the borders reshape,

Daylight dismantles her spectral escape.

The gray world returns as her image grows faint,

Yet the promise of midnight keeps the solitary sane.

Summer has faded, the green fields are gone,

The leaves turn to embers as autumn moves on.

The air has grown crisp with the stealing of light,

As cool autumn afternoons yield to the night.

A collective excitement begins to awake

For the phantoms and witches the darkness will make.

Soon goblins and monsters will step from the shade,

To walk the wide earth where the memories fade.

The tables are turned and the season has woken,

In the Ides of the Fall when the silence is broken.

Though shadows may crowd and the twilight grows chill,

We huddle together, expectant and still.

The old warmth is put down as the wild things awaken—

For daylight has vanished; ’tis Halloween season.

I step off the gravel path, leaving the daylight noise behind,

Slipping into a cathedral built of bark and quiet mind.

Here, the shadows do not crowd; they do not question or evaluate,

The heavy canopy just rests, an ancient, unblinking gate.

And then she stands before me, weathered, magnificent, and high,

A single monument of timber reaching out to claim the sky.

She does not ask for titles, nor the metrics of the day,

She only beckons with her branches, clearing winter walls away.

To stand beneath her quiet weight is to drop my heavy coat,

To find a sanctuary waiting in a world that time forgot.

No need to prove a history, no need to guard the floor,

Just a solitary traveler welcomed at the forest door.