The watchtower stands:
     An oak,
     A tree forced to its height
     By the forest that once surrounded it,
     Sacred tree to the Druids,
     Food-producer for a squirrel.

The watchtower stands:
     Alone,
     Open field stretching back,
     Beside, and around the tree,
     Four lanes of highway before it
     And a bare orange rift in the earth,
     As plowed by bulldozer and pan,
          Not a quarter mile away.

The watchtower stands:
     Unclimbed,
     Its lowest limb some twenty feet
     Above the meadow cattle graze,
     Its limbs touched only by birds,
                    By the squirrels,
     By that resting owl
     That solitary afternoon,
          Still remembered.

"I believe in nothing but the woods,"
     Roy told me,
     "I believe in woods.
     And I believe in death
     --- And Bigfoot."
Bigfoot?
     A link with innocence,
     A right to die,
     A connection between
     Guilty, burning human lust
     And animal innocence,
          Amoral, free,
          In destruction safe from intent,
     Safe from the wicked knowledge ...

The watchtower stands:
     Shrunken,
     Its upper body shattered
     By a bolt of mindless lightning,
     Rifling downward just to touch
          Heaven to earth
     In the midst of an open field
     And lighting on the highest point,
     The single standing tree.

The watchtower stands:
     Hollowed,
     Still home to squirrels,
          Mythic wood nymphs,
          And occasional birds,
     And he sees it from the highway,
          Talks about the owl
          And grumbles,
     "It should fall.
     I believe in death ..."
     And woods, and Bigfoot, I recall.

10/21/83

Appeared in Hill & Valley, vol. 7, no. 8, March 1985.
 
 

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