Art's Meadow

A place in the Upper Peninsula

Who nailed the rungs up
to the first big branch
on the oak tree
in Art Reid's meadow?

Did a boy once perch there,
squinting at a buck
in from the forest?

Was it his brother?
The one who owns
the scrap metal yard
up the road in Dafter.

Secure to hand and foot,
the rungs suit the oak
like the stripes on a noncom
somehow still standing
when so many others fell.

Loggers never got
that tree in the corner.
It makes the pasture
something other than just
an undulating field of hay.

Art's land is surrounded
by deep forest
on all four sides.
Bush and sappling
take back ancient trails
and untraveled two tracks.
It was easy for the wolves to return.

Forefathers have faded.
A few left names on long dirt roads.
Recently, more have been digitized;
as title insurance companies have scanned
the handwritten surnames of farmers, like fossilized fish bones:

So and so, "... a married man", "his wife", "grantor", "grantee", "quit claim" and so on. These paper traces of them have become a new info product from the past.

Art's parcel lies
at the end of Pheiffer Road.
It's land that knows not drought.
A spring, a spring that never runs dry,
feeds a creek with an Indian name.

A dam built with sticks
and an old tractor tire
lures water fowl to unsafe solitude.
For above the pond,
a false porcupine of brittle gray branches may conceal shotguns and retrievers.

The water pools,
then trickles over,
under,
through
and down,
down further
to the tea stained river
on its way to St. Martin's Bay.

On the northwestern bluff,
floor rotted out,
a tower on stilts,
turned one-eyed cubist skull,
watches over the early autumn grass.

Some sheets of its plywood cranium moulder among the blackberry bramble. To the side, iron equipment,
once pulled by horses,
lies rusting in peaceful company.

Though he lives nearby,
Art seldom visits this land.
Down the road, a man with an apple orchard used to ski the inner treeline.

This meadow would return
to maple, birch and pine,
but Art has someone cut the hay
and keep it open to the sky.

From their cattle farmer father
the land passed in trust to Art and his brothers. Now, they're trying to sell.
Time to let go.

Were you to buy it, you would gain
the constellations without competition from city light.

Churches far outnumber dollar stores
in these parts,
and in these parts
God will give you
three feet of winter snow.

Last night, lightning flashed between the clouds. Without the murmur of thunder, a pale blue light flickered upon Art's meadow.

You could still keep cows or horses
in that place on the edge of the great wood. But you couldn't truly call it your own till you saw a child venture up that old tree in Art Reid's meadow.