I may have written this in my head while waiting for a search dog to discover me well-camouflaged in woods – waiting for the dog to find and then convince its handler to believe what’s detectable to a dog’s nose. Original title: Unwanted Visitors:
Expecting Visitors
I can lie here like a log when someone’s coming.
I can climb under bark and deadfall, dry leaves
in this land of trees and squirrels, of logs
suspicious of trucks and chainsaws.
Two spring trickles become a stream over moss
and small rocks, coming together to gather
a pond and go on its way. I can be a log
beside a pond: speechless, invisible giving off
scant breath, a little scent carried off on the breeze.
Someone already is past or will be passing
somewhere else. A log sleeps in its rings,
its unique thumbprint, sloughing off its bark
becoming unsplittable wood.
~ Taylor Graham
from Still Life with Wood Smoke (Mt. Aukum Press, 2002)