Soul Mountain Retreat #2

At the end of a chilly, rainy day--gathering in the harvest of things done, felt, seen tasted, touched, even smelled . . .

Scent of drenched soil rising through a mat of wintered-over leaves

Pale green lichens spotting rocks and trees

A white-tailed deer facing me sideways across the wet driveway, fringed with dripping newly budded leaves

The mechanical click of the battery-operated clock in the too-bright kitchen where I write

Perfume of deeply steeped rooibos tea on my tongue

(I finally figured out what rooibos reminds me of: sweet tobacco!)

At dusk, when the rain had dissipated into a fine mist, I took a walk out the driveway and turned left on the one-lane road that passes the house. I walked until I reached a vista of meadows and several grander but still tasteful wood-sided houses nestled back in the breast of hills. On either side the road is lined with low stone walls, probably of the kind Frost wrote about: stacks of large, odd-shaped fieldstone. The woods are full of rocks and boulders competing with each other to see who can wear more of the pale-green lichens that grow profusely here. It must be a damp spot. Skunk cabbage is sprouting wherever running water gathers into shallow pools. When I returned to the house I saw a full-sized female white-tailed deer staring at me from the edge of the woods, so still. It's a good thing deer are shy; an aggressive or even friendly deer would be a rather terrifying creature with its size and speed. I started back into the woods again, but when I saw another deer--or this same one again--I thought better of disturbing her habitat at dusk. So I came back into the house and wrote this down.