|
trespassing in the woods near Cherry Hill, between Route 1 and the Potomac in Dumfries, VA, ca. 1990
She took shelter in the flat space beneath the tower, followed by her fawn, and her fawn, and on,
beneath the electrical currents, beneath the exchange paths of ions, packeted waves of light from space.
Deer, Dad, and I, our ways broke from the untrampled first route, from the one
that led from where we slept, into the stretches of bee-singing high-tension wires and humidity.
We found our ways into a dell beneath a tower,
a nest with droppings, tawny haunches bending here, guiltless grass broken in its sleep, a tick.
My jeans like deerskin, the tick knows the route it climbs.
Doe's fat flanks spread the stems.
In the tradition of bison, migratory beasts hauling mass, trains of mastodons filing along
behind wooly monarchs, behind trail-burning engines, behind imperial machines: the King's Highway,
an old Doeg road. "They were a mean tribe," my Dad jokes, meaning antagonistic to whites.
The wind sounds out like motors, and the trees over the road bend only as low as trucks go, as ticks bite bullseyes. |
|
