Bog
The homestead fields
protected now
by a conservancy of garden clubs.
The empty rail bed where
a rusty spike among oak leaves
was coveted treasure
now cleared and well-marked with bits of paint
historic markers
ordered cobblestones
keeping joggers neatly on the trail.
The cattle pass built in stone below the tracks
a long climb down and up for a strong child
now a lovely bridge and nursery flowers
history strangely silent
as to why there might be
such a structure at all
across a flat pasture.
Always oak had grown here
they at least had not grown as old
as I remembered them.
I could not find the meadow bog
though it lay clearly in my memory
unchanged, hot and fragrant
in summer heat and broken grasses
oily sage of sweetfern baking in July
past a spill of boulders once known
as The Caves although
there was no marker for them.
Picking my way through pines
and finding a depression on the deeply needled ground
it occurred to me
that I am old as these trees
that never were in this meadow
and the bog lay under my feet
and over my reaching hands.
The homestead fields
protected now
by a conservancy of garden clubs.
The homestead fields
protected now
by a conservancy of garden clubs.
The empty rail bed where
a rusty spike among oak leaves
was coveted treasure
now cleared and well-marked with bits of paint
historic markers
ordered cobblestones
keeping joggers neatly on the trail.
The cattle pass built in stone below the tracks
a long climb down and up for a strong child
now a lovely bridge and nursery flowers
history strangely silent
as to why there might be
such a structure at all
across a flat pasture.
Always oak had grown here
they at least had not grown as old
as I remembered them.
I could not find the meadow bog
though it lay clearly in my memory
unchanged, hot and fragrant
in summer heat and broken grasses
oily sage of sweetfern baking in July
past a spill of boulders once known
as The Caves although
there was no marker for them.
Picking my way through pines
and finding a depression on the deeply needled ground
it occurred to me
that I am old as these trees
that never were in this meadow
and the bog lay under my feet
and over my reaching hands.
The homestead fields
protected now
by a conservancy of garden clubs.
