Edge of the Woods

What is not here is here
every day:

the boulder huge and peaked
is not after all a house
gray in the shade of the woods,

pines and hemlocks huddled close
to what is not its foundation.

And the lower rock, squat,
on second glance is not a shed
hoarding its tools, supplies,

stone feed for the birds,
stone seed for the lawn,

a whestone to sharpen
every stone blade.

Farther down the road,
it¹s hardly a boulder at all

that is not a deer, bending its neck
to root beneath the snow.

by Martha Carlson-Bradley

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Last updated: January 4, 2005