Boundaries

The old man went with me when I walked the line,
checking boundaries. We drove round the mountain
to an unkempt farm on its western slope, parked,
and ranged its pasture for a survey marker,
dividing blatting sheep among the trampled
sedges along a line of willow. The sign
of success was a cap of brass, much chewed by
bush hogs and sickle bar mowers: the section
corner. We cut a pole from willow for our
chain, and taking compass in hand, set out south
along the invisible section line, straight
up one knee of the dark mountain, floundering
through viney maples, over old hemlock logs,
around the huge stumps of shipped-out firs, with their
deep-set eyes, which were the notches cut by men
to set their spring boards in to stand on, drawing
their singing misery whips through the bellies
of the silent giants. We flagged the line as
we went, hanging the orange strips from chittims,
blackcherries, huckleberries, bigleaf maple.
Across to the south side of the hill we shanked,
breaking out into sun sometimes, waist deep in
bracken ferns and trailing blackberries, pushing
through young Douglas firs with their rich Christmas whiff,
down to the alders with ancient yews lurking
in their shade, and crawled through tall salmonberry
at last into my new-made clearing by my
new-built house, hanging a flag only fifteen
feet off the flag we'd hung before we drove out.
The old man admired the results, and said to
the old woman, standing by, "That boy is just
the same in the woods as I am way out on
the water; always knows right where he is." She
nodded, and handed him a cup of coffee,
with cream, no sugar, and not too hot or cold.