.                          (Cedars of Peace, Nerinx, KY)

If I sit here long enough
I know I am not alone,
only screen between me
and the complicated world
of bird call
and response, of spider
and her web made visible
by light, itself known only
in reflection and shadow,
and all the ones I cannot
see at all who rattle
grass or limb,
who stare at me
from behind a mother’s haunches,
who slither or scramble
by without a glance,
who know my smell, who hear
this pen across the page.
And we who sit on porches
scattered through these woods
not ours are connected through
this web made visible
by our solitary
attention.

-Pauletta Hansel