Printed in The Meadow, 2011:
Buckeye Hot Springs
Just
down the creek lie the ruins
of
Buckeye Sawmill.
I
curl around a sleeping dog’s back,
late
sun sifting the crowns
of second growth pines along the bank.
How
prosperous a place for a warm bath
after
ripping and planking, the scent of sawdust
wafting
in the summer of 1861.
Yet
buckskinned men and roughened horses
couldn’t
drag away the few ancient cedars
or
single wall of trunk we passed today
gripping
the loose ravine with knuckled roots,
fragments
of old conversation high in the drainages.
Extrapolate
the forest from tree, tree.
The
difference in species doesn’t matter,
in
sleep. The dog and I share a primal warmth
of
breath and soil. I’d like to think
this
was how a garden slept
before
language separated,
as
our island splits the gentle murmuring stream now,
the
sucking and trickling of soft absorption,
the
bank a sponge, and myself,
as
if spelled. Nearby a young stag is just knowing
the
velvet brown of antlers
no
taller than his twitching ears.
He
dips a narrow hoof and steps across
just
below our sleeping heads lined up like lovers,
leaving
no difference in sound.
