GBP
Jim Harrison.
Seven in the Woods
Am I as old as I am?
Maybe not.
Time is a mystery
that can tip us upside down.
Yesterday I was seven in the woods, a bandage covering my blind eye, in a bedroll
Mother made meso I could sleep out in the woodsfar from people.
A garter snake glided bywithout noticing me.
A chickadee landed on my bare toe, so light she wasn't believable.
The night had been long and the treetops thick with a trillion stars.
Who was I, half-blind on the forest floor who was I at age seven?
Sixty-eightyears later I can still inhabit that boy's body without thinking of the time between.
It is the burden of life to be many ages
without seeing the end of time.
