Karl Carpenter

Ant-hills clutter the middle of the yard,
each reaching to a towering two inches,
congregating in a puddle of sand
staining an otherwise green field.
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A mass of moss that covers the clearing,
an ocean of purple and white
that's soft and wet at dawn with dew,
but crusty and dry by night.
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There is a pine I see every dawn,
standing eye to eye with my childhood home,
grown so long that half the trunk is bare
of branches and the creases of bark can show.
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The crow is exposed to the wind flouting its power,
thrashed about up and down and side to side,
feathers unkempt and nearly thrown against a pine,
the wind booming like the long hum of the gods' base drum,
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The sun has only just descended,
its last light mingles with the night,
the sky is a dark hue of blue,
whispering the last gasp of day.
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Treading down the path in early spring,
the birds are cawing and playing, spreading their wings,
the tree buds fight to fill the forest with green,
the first deer in too many weeks just seen!
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When northern earth begins to shun the sun,
the leaves shred off and shrivel- each like a corpse,
and trunks left naked like standing skeletons,
a cemetery for summer, the Christian sort.
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It seems that spring has just arrived,
the first and biggest rains just came,
the birds are in the yard out back,
feasting on the newly emerged worms,
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Of our condition little we know,
why do we find a high or low?
Where is it that our actions come?
Drives our gaze to ocean or sun?
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