Milestones: 1. Kingdom

Mist rises this morning;
hills fade as I watch.
By my gaunt fence,
the elder becomes grey

bones; it waits, a shadow

of shape and memory

where the robin’s lull
unnerves the wood beyond.
The elements are out
and I cannot clarify.

My focus is one small patch
around my feet, the grass

my aim in a cast dawn,
one thin shoot taut
where drops depend
on the blade’s arc.

My faces tremble
across their mirrors,
captive, an atom’s

width from extinction
and nowhere to go,
but down.

Over the turning core,
earth puddles and slicks:
one slip and all roots gone,
I am giddy and sick
in a fall where haze
clings cold on my skin.

A small wind
shifts the air,
the beetle flies;
my only tokens
for each fat season
when gold fields shine.

This poem and the ten following are part of the sequence, Milestones.