In the eye of the beholder lies memory

And these Canadian lodgepole woods

could be, with a shift, the white pine,

the oak, the laurel of childhood.

Over this hill there would be a tangle

of kudzu and honeysuckle, the creek,

then up the other side to the earliest

Blooming dogwood, the blacksnake startling

underfoot - though it never snowed there

as it's snowing now, burying boulders

And path, and elk never scraped the ground;

clouds were never this fixed and

shade of granite, that day

I brought back for my mother the dogwood branch,

a torch to the dry house, young artist

exploring the forest.