In the eye of the beholder lies memory
And these Canadian lodgepole woods
could be, with a shift, the white pine,
the oak, the laurel of childhood.
Over this hill there would be a tangle
of kudzu and honeysuckle, the creek,
then up the other side to the earliest
Blooming dogwood, the blacksnake startling
underfoot - though it never snowed there
as it's snowing now, burying boulders
And path, and elk never scraped the ground;
clouds were never this fixed and
shade of granite, that day
I brought back for my mother the dogwood branch,
a torch to the dry house, young artist
exploring the forest.
