A Rod-Perhaps a Staff

A Rod-Perhaps a Staff This time I didn't have to ask. I dip my hands into green streams and come up with butterfleis. The yellow one is a mischief, as much as the skink with the blue tail, its four legs running fast, that by the time we laugh, it's down behind the rock, and you and I look to each other, for some correspondence. While the red cardinal visits by the back door. I look off to where a horizon used to be and find that branches cover the gap that once was left between field and sky. I need not see beyond this place. Since I have been here, it is the same everyday. Bark curls easily around my fingers, and I touch each tree that borders the woods. My absence has created a conservation of filmy winged creatures. They fly low enough to touch and I no longer have to chase them. Squirrels find nuts exposed on the brick patio, and disregard the old dog nodding by his plate. It was the pond by the road, bordered by thin willows, I thought was gone. Then when ready to wade through deep grass and face the task of recovery, I found it, deep and brown and filled with shadows, hidden by persimmon trees that had thickened. I gauge its depth now and judgea few more years before the silt makes everything even. -Mary Ann Barnett 73 ...