Architecture of the Unpronounced

After winter’s thaw it is the bubbling sound
drawing me up the steep slope

that patch of mountain I call my own
surely as if I drove a flag into the ground

and staked a claim. I’ve heard the trees
playing the wind, witnessed forsythia

praying on their knees. I have scythed a path
hurled stones, dislodged boulders

with a great grunt and a crow-bar
the way my father taught me

that summer at the lake
when the birch was still a sapling
and time had yet to carve a map
upon his face, we unhinged stones
from mountain beds, drizzled them down a hill
exploding lilac and clover.
We set rocks where soil was slipping fast
cemented our days into stone
that still retains the summer.

Today ankle deep in muck
that oozes into my sneaker

I am raking winter’s rot
and discover under wet leaves

a lush patch of strawberries
summer at the lake

and you father
cemented in my bones.