II

Up beach, on the embankment

With root and rock handholds

You hoist yourself onto a path

Into loose stands of spruce

Where bunchberry and reindeer

Lichen clump around the trunks

Of young hemlocks and old birch,

Nursery and graveyard.

Down a slope

You behold a Forest Temple,

A hole to the sky, saplings

Surround, and, at the center,

Careless on the ground, the detritus

Of a Great White Pine, limbs

And stump covered with Old Man's

Beard and Artist's Conk: a lesson

In mortality. You understand

That. You understand that

The Spirit of a Red Man

Presides here, that he has spoken

About sorrow, about loss.

Then a late summer breeze

Rustling the wildwood, hastens

You on, toward a clearing.