Oak Haven

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OAK HAVEN

            

               — 3.14 acres on the Chickamauga battlefield


What grows this time of year 

is all we didn’t plant: scores 

of wild blackberry, tart apples from a tree 

the neighbor’s grandfather imagined one day

harvesting, morning mushrooms

opening to light like a prayer. 

All we didn’t do to deserve this fills

more baskets than we carry. Still,

 

in Spring we bike the battlefield, 

rubber tread rolling over the dead

leaves of Winter. The trees bear 

the burden to re-member 

what is too heavy for us to hold. 

This is the toil tasked

the trees. Ours too is heavy 

work: to tread lightly as the doe 

dew-stepping the meadow 

of Mcfarland’s Gap. To tread lightly 

all the way home. And when we get there

to leave the questions unanswered

as we soil our thumbs with a seeding 

prayer for the seasonal resurrection 

of the long rows of muscadine 

the farmer never returned to pick.

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