Adaptation

The river wound about the foothills,
it flowed over rocks and slid lithely
through its high wild banks with brambles and branches reaching
toward her middle where the water was deep and silent.
Late summer haze yellowed the cornfields and hay stubble.
Goldenrod spears nodded to bees.

There was expectancy; perhaps that summer would end,
but that air was nebulous in the heat.
The only sounds were crickets whose rhythm was so subtle
in it’s seeping as to be no more apparent than breathing.
And the call of a blackbird from his reedy perch.

Fields and rivers I’ve always known,
and the line of mountains showing blue in the distance.
I’ve come late to hills, to the talking of trees,
the stone heart of the mountain.
Summers are short, and fall rusts and bleeds before the white of frost.
Lying nights awake, the darkness presses.
I hear trees cracking frozen as though their backs were broken.
The river is silent under her green ice.

Now I am the keeper of the fire.
I feed tree’s bones to the black and wait for spring.