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iv Without our walking there, the landscape might dissolve. His trees were young. A drought-summer spark had cleared The western third some time ago, and when he could, He meant to have that forest back. He planted spruce The size of children's pencils, fifteen hundred sprays Of evergreen, each year as spindly as the last. It hurt to watch him tearing up the ones he'd lost. We carried water from the brook sometimes. It sluiced A dozen clotted paths, where once an ancestor sliced The forest open, and oxen, yoked, had dragged a road. This was ours. New Hampshire, north of us, was broad And diffident as France. With vague disdain, at six, I knew our woods were better-even my burdocked socks Belonged to Massachusetts. And I loved our field Whose hundred-year-old hair had not been cut; it filled With captivated birds. A thorny orchard kept A dozen wizards prisoner. I watched their script Of runes engrave the granite sky with ancient debt. Everything the woods could teach, my father taught: Delight, exactitude, a faith, his journeyman's doubt. From THE SQUANICOOK ECLOGUES (W.W. Norton & Co., 1987) |
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