What will it be today? you ask. It’s spring at the base
of the mountain but winter at the top. The brooks
are high but the land is dry and crumbles underfoot.

We are surveyors trying to measure what can’t be
measured, wanting to set the record straight. Needle
in the groove. One owl, two, hoot through seams

in the woods, confirming we are all just molecules
drifting. Ports of entry, ports of empty. Barbed wire
that once wrapped around this tree, now wraps into

the tree, is the tree and we follow tugging at thorns.
What was hidden for generations blossoms once,
then disappears. Like we’ll all disappear, you say.

Like these ferns leaning into and out of hollows,
in and out of control. We don’t see ourselves as part
of the past. We stand on a summit and see paths

and paths, each leading to a future that circles back.
Our lives only seem linear, you say as we crisscross
streams. Forests messy as memories. Infections spread

though we staunch the wound. We want to rise above
our field of vision, vision of a field, of swamp.
But the earth keeps reaching out with its burrs and ticks,

grabbing at anything and who can blame it? Not us.
Come on, you say. Like Alice we can’t separate
ourselves from falling even as we slide down another

dank hole. Lost saints in the parking lot search for
loose change. Emerging from pine shadows we inform
the customs official we have nothing to declare.