Crossing the Field

CROSSING THE FIELD

Wind fills up the lot,
and the leaves fly and fill
you full of their colors,
in watery, glanced instants,
their first paths of detachment.

And cold to see are
the bare brown spots
of sandy gravel; glistenings
only in spats of sunlight,
arguing the evidence of frost.

The birds know better
than to sing this, without
a tree, far from the edge of the black
locusts’ poison and thorns,
obsolete fence of the forest.

Out along a nowhere patch
of highway and of
no value to developers,
not a path remains,
if ever there were

young boys, or cows.
Only some dumped metal
junk, no more recent
than Elvis, rusted
beyond recognition.

And a brush pile,
black and old,
descending into a barren
plot, long abandoned
by mice and rabbits.

The ground behind me, beneath
the whistling leaves,
is already too hard and printless.
At 72, childless, my path has
no footprints.