Wilderness Interface Zone

(for Dad)

Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
Appalachia’s air chilled gradually,
The valley’s likenesses on deeper pools
Shivering as mayflies burst the watercolor
Skins, and theirs, taking to air, trailing
Papery past selves after them in flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
A trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. He was wading toward the nearest bank
Where yellow tiger lilies thrust their heads
Above mad tangles of grass trailing the current.
Feeling through many years of wandering round him
The gravity of some intent, I followed close
And broke the silver ripples of his wake.
“Let’s take the path.  We’ll cross again above,”
He said.  I understood just where, and so
We clattered on the gravel with empty creels.
In an abandoned orchard, adolescent
Apples swelled, stone green, not yet much burden
On their boughs. We plucked wild blackberries
Dripping among thorns, filling our mouths
With fruit still warm from standing in the sun.
A stalk of goldenrod, its bud crown forming,
Jutted shoulders and head above the rest.
One of its leaves dipped lower.  There, beneath it,
A butterfly hung folded for the night.
Here was something to show; I called him round—
“Watch this”—and putting out a youngster hand,
Which shook, I slipped a finger through its legs
And so became its leaf.  Its filaments
Shuffled for a hold upon my skin,
And there it dangled, groggy-sensed, and free.
“The thing is holding me.”  I thought of all
The butterflies I had kept caged
Inside that hand, beating wild against
My skin, and I, wounded, sprung my finger
Bars at blows softer than sleeper’s breath
And watched the insects stagger, fear-drunk, to the air.
Then, left looking at my dusted fingers,
I shamed my motives and hungered by that shame.
“Here, hold.”  He reached out his work-etched hand.
The fumbling creature hooked its spurs and clung,
Still, like dew.  The valley’s dusk set deeper.
We set the insect beneath its shelter-leaf.
“Come on,” he said.  “We’ve got to cross the creek.”
We crossed the creek, me feeling the way after
Through flowing shadows, a waterway turned velvet
Dark of forest face and leafy, long
Reflection, and he an image fading off the stream.