by Zachary Bos, from the chapbook Refuge:

Pinegrove

Here the purple air is wholly motionless
and hangs low, heavy with the clean scent of
summer sweet-fern. Across the water, a heron
rests among the white water-lilies, slowly
opening and closing her dark bill

in the immobile heat. I could but must not
sit still here forever; this remedy called
peace-and-quiet is a preview to the never-ending
calm of death. These trees rising like columns
dig their white roots into the buried bodies

of dead trees that seeded them. Each yellow
fern-stalk waving flag-like under the pine-boughs
marks a grave of some kind. We must never
confuse the refuge with the world beyond,
where just and needful work waits for us,

and waits for those who will come after us.
The heron is hunting again, moving through
sun and shade. After catching our breath we must
rise and leave our shrines of bells and perfumed
smoke, and return to our unfinished worlds.

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