Immortality

There were people in these woods

long before I retired and settled in,

moving towards my own demise here.

I see them in my wandering, wondering,

searching for myself and, perhaps, immortality;

see them on an old dirt road, rutted and grown

over, tree bent, brush covered, brambled,

barely recognizable and navigable,

and behind the stone wall they built, collapsed now,

though there are long stretches still standing;

the rocks are crumbling, but are still piled up

like nature cannot do, nature bent on tearing down,

casting asunder what man builds up.

I see them, too, in the home that once stood here,

a young family, sheltered and housed, tilling

and toiling the land in the once-cleared field beyond.

The house is now only a shallow depression,

a stray brick and the rusted and broken

detritus of man’s attempts to claim

for himself this land as his own,

land un-claimable but by itself.

I, too, have tried, attempted,

built a home and toiled, pushed back

at nature pushing forward, pushing me out;

patient over the long haul,

nature reclaims itself, and me with it.

A gentle stream rages now, gouging

and carrying itself away to the lake,

nature continuing its course toward immortality,

and I am become but the artifacts I will leave behind,

discovered in a young man’s wanderings, wondering.