First Walk Through the Copse
I kick at the fallen oak to see if anything lives in the rot. A centipede rushes out, flies from the carrion raccoon land on my shoe. The cows of the Mennonites— black and white like their laundry on the line. Milk-white water in the stills, the lake full so far this year sediment of leaves at its edges. I think in quotes and fashionable asides when in the city. But I’ve brought nothing with me to these forty acres. I’ll buy what I need when I need it. I take up two sticks, one fits into the circle of an old dog vertebrae, the other’s a vine light as air in my hand. As one flies through fire, the other swims. Thinking back to that first walk around your parents’ farm, I was between knowing too much and knowing very little, two months before my thirtieth year.