in thirty minutes, in fall

All in thirty minutes, dodging rust and glass from

Last century’s middens,

The low-angled sun on the river backlights

The floating insect particles,

Still speckling the fall-

And the twig in my pocket that matches

The bobcat tracks, pad to toe,

One carefully inside the other,

Piercing my hip-

And the aging gray birch who

Seems a magnet,

Drawing a flock of goldfinches

Suddenly, like static,

    whose cheeky caps have dropped

so as to  disappear, becoming

The old birch’s golden leaves-

So I, coming in,

Gathering about me four heavy blankets who have

Seen who knows what all day,

 am so quickly laden.

a small dusk poem

I do not doubt that the old oaks speak.
Or that the biting dear wind
knows my cheek in particular.
Here in the dim gray dusk
the ground knows my knees,
and the white pine sentinels
are my unmetaphorical guard.

Merleau-Ponty writes
we know ourselves at the crossing of our worlds,
where one hand embraces the other.
outer meets inner-

But I know myself in the
body of the land, at the
edge of my skin. Or rather,
I forget myself
and am remembered.