The Wild

Justine Cook

The buzzing of a ladybug（瓢虫） above the bathroom mirror

sounds like a small plane considering a landing on my head,

bowed toward the executioner's block -- the sink.

My hands cup water like a supplicant（恳求者）, asking for a stay of despair

as my eyes, salty green as the olives our daughter adores, question the hour

when one of us will break from the confines of our lawn,

lush（豪华的） and shaggy（篷松的） from fall rains,

and kick through the sad confetti（五彩纸屑） of fallen leaves,

which shimmered gold and promise-like

on the massive maple -- as old as our country -- before dropping in a luminous（发光的）

pool around it. Downright heraldic.

Now those leaves cast about like a wizened（干瘪的） nuisance

and their sunkenness says rake me out of sight behind the barn

and keep trudging（跋涉） upward -- up the steep base of Red Mountain,

rising behind our house, past the denuded birches

to the bear tree, clawed until it snapped twenty feet up.

Quiet and violent it marks the border --

beyond which the wild begins.