If there were a higher spot to stand,
call it a deck, but not for rolling seas
or even mountain vistas (such insistent
sublimity), only the slow waves of
some open fields half-tended and
clumped with thistle or milkweed,
those things which, October again,
release their seeds into air, drifting
toward edges lined with trees that
change their clothes with the year,
and maybe rock walls too, long pried
from stubborn soil, their haphazard
faces crusted with lichen as they work
slowly back under the patient earth,
and if the skies were stitched with birds,
heavy-threaded crows, a single red-tail
circling as deer tiptoe out into the thick
grass, curious ears turning this way
and that, if grasshoppers rattled past
and dragonflies shimmered in the sun,
what else could I dare to ask?
