May Variations/Poem #5: Another Country

Soon we are in another country
reigned by creatures better than we.
The gap to the road is closed
and we walk through mist that dampens
my eyelashes and chest.
Trees sag beneath greenery,
and the road turns to dirt.
There is nothing for it
but to walk among
dangerous grasses and flowers
with names that are serious.
Bold new limbs rise from an
amputated stump;
did someone plant that,
my partner wonders?
He retrieves small notebook
and pen for recordkeeping.

But I have found a doorway
to the marshland and leave time
and man behind.
Bees crowd me, urgent and
crazed with work.
Pacific chorus frogs
bless the unfolding afternoon.
Sun floods the valley, makes
a grand sweep of its inhabitants
Caught in its luster,
I am here to learn humility.
The breaths I take
are so fragrant
I dare not swallow.

A marsh wren trembles
upon a blade as it warbles.
Golden flash of wings herald
common yellowthroats
while a Northern harrier,
pitiless hunter yet elegant
as a prince, rises from piney forest
then descends.
There are birds I cannot see
but their voices swallow the valley,
silvery and insistent,
pulsing across waterways
that surround me
like a widening magic circle.
One more song will surely
carry me far away.

Eventually I wend my way back
to the beginning.
I am at ease but careful
to leave no footprints.
How can I abandon
a stillness this resonant,
earth vibrating with insects
and spring plants swaying,
the mouths of birds like oracles?

This place which did not know me
gives me all of itself.
I pull it close so that
when I am alone there will be
birds calling my true name
and frogs harkening in the night.
I will float down a
moon-shot dream river that
carries me back to upland meadows
and marshlands.
Here, beaver, salmon
and this woman are safe to return.