On a Field in the Present

first published in Pleiades 41.1

I was walking through the woods and was not

the woods but one walking, thinking

of the other side of the woods, where I was from

and not through the woods, where I was headed —

and a dropped stick in the dirt there was

a photograph of my grandmother I remember,

a black-and-white of a yellow kitchen,

and that exposed rock was the gloss paint

on the walls of my school, and this stripped tree

was that kiss on the steps that came on

surprised and scary. But how was I always here

that these things would wait for me? No,

I came to this place with trees like constellations

and thought it was myself. But look,

there’s another rock which isn’t my school

but my old house, or the crickets in the field

that stole my sleep, or the dreams I had of hiding

and I am hiding in a rock by a ledge

where a storm tore the roots out of the ground

and they hung dangling, crying mud

but now the rock moves and the tree lifts

and the woods rustle in a swarm and I stagger

like a cliff.