Home Place

This is the way it was:
the cold warned my feet,
the wind urged me to leave,
the snowfield blinded my paths,
but a buried stump and a straight fence
told me their names.
I listened carefully lest the voice
of the season confuse their speech
and leave me lost in a land
of unknown tongues.
But when their names were said
I knew what landscape lay hidden
under the winter folds,
and while a vagrant wind
stole leaves from a sleeping oak,
I stood my ground.