Divide Meadow - Dave Seter

[Lawrence Robinson]

Divide Meadow

Two hillsides of Douglas Fir face each other 
across a pleasant divide. Year by year
 
a few more volunteers enter the meadow as seed, 
to grow, if the deer allow it. Out in the open, vulnerable,
 
it doesn’t seem to matter from which side
the seedlings came, even as the two sides meet.
 
As through the eye of a needle, a trail threads the firs
shoulder to shoulder as they climb out of the meadow.
 
A fine place for the hiker to rest, out in the open, no giants
over our shoulders only deer-browsed saplings at our feet.
 
The tall grass may have been introduced 
through hay or horse-feed but the deer don’t care.
 
Dry August seems when a deer’s appetite for green 
tips can be understood, and a taste for resin.
 
Either way, a tentative quiet balances in the hiker
seated on a fallen log hewn into a bench, yet to rot.
 
Pit holes in the log suggest insects have tried to digest 
the cellulose without much success. No deer here now.
 
A finch adds a stroke of gold to the meadow’s brushwork
among ample pungency of decay and dirt.
 
When fog comes it won’t divide us from lichen and moss.
We will breathe. We will just be ourselves, breathing.

	- Dave Seter