Double Ditch ice jam

Fox Island ice jam

August

This day begins
where the matted deer path wanders into the trees.
Russian Olives shape a thorny moat
dare you enter.

Inside rows of thickets and tall grasses tangle.
Columns of plum trees--fruit green for the season,
chokecherry, buffalo berry and a ripe red early berry
nourish the souless.

Follow along well worn friend,
smell the pine-shadows and junegrass.

Sun spills over tattered earth
from bark branched skeletons
deflecting light.

Silent feathered phantoms speed ahead.
A buck beds down in nature's grandfatherly lap.

This path curves gently
no need for map or compass.

The only questions to this life--
where do you emerge,
and does it matter?

Title: August, Mary Oliver
American Primitive
"In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue."

Dreaming of Medora