OSheep Mountain, revisited

Image Credit, Fran Woods

We bought the old place
for its reach to the woods

one step from the door and on to the trail

is to enter the place
where the boundary awaits
where the rusted sign says
“please latch the gate”

There’s a corner-tree there
back deep in the woods
a spruce, near eight feet around,
and girded by strands of forgotten barbed wire.

On the day
that the rancher and his boy
built this fence together
did he stop, and stand, and look across

and loving his son
with each beat of his chest

know that this day

this sweet golden day

this bright manly day

what we do with our days

is like the clear river

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