Coming to the meadow’s slopping boundary,
traffic jams and minutia’s fog behind me,
I push through the cattywampus thatch gate.
Birdsong echoes fade, rebound, repeating
among the trees and slopes instead of voices
dropping names and meet ups in their cellphones.
Late day shadows chill me, cloak my sight line,
cover bloodied leaf duff for a moment.
Then the smell of battle mixed in hot dust,
trembling stems, and shifting branches signal
desperate scrambling. Prey or preyed on?
Like an actor cued for a wrong entrance,
I stumble on an unexpected drama.
Something altered by what I saw, or didn’t.
Judith Grey lives in Maine. She finds inspiration in the woods, by the sea, and in her community. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Emrys Journal, The Lyric, Calyx, Loch Raven Review, Baltimore Review, Blueline, Oberon, About Place Journal: Practices of Hope and forthcoming in Ocean State Review.
