Graciously Allowed to Stay

A poem by Margo Solod

I walk carefully, shuffling my feet
through loose leaves, pushing the tip
of a hickory branch into thickets
before I pass through. I never lift the rocks
piled into cairns by farmers
trying to tame this space that just wants
to be left alone. I've yet to see a snake but Ann,
who fears them saw six on the road, and one
coiled thick and black as David's arm
around the ring of locust trunks
that should have been a fence by now,
logs sprouting pale green each spring
in remembrance. The dog chalks hobo symbols
spelling danger at the garden's edge.
I've trusted in this talisman two seasons now,
the deer remain outside the boundaries
of this scented fence. I am resigned
to the inevitable, which redefines
at sundown every day. Everything I see
belongs to me. Nothing is mine.

"Graciously Allowed to Stay" was previously published in Some Very Soft Days, mayapple press, 2005.

Copyright 2006 by Margo Solod