Through dense forest she guides me 
to a wall of stones piled waist-high, 
boulders lifted by black hands 
in a land of white winters. 

Caleb a slave escaped Virginia to the Adirondacks,
cleared 40 acres of northern jungle
axing tree, rolling rock, ton upon ton. 
Caleb, her ancestor. In my whiteness 
she wants me to understand. 
In my infatuation, I try.

Caleb scratched out a living no child would endure. 
Slavery, they said, would be easier.
Not better, but warmer and less work.
It was family legend, a bitter family joke. 
Abandoned fields reverted to birch, to maple, 
then finally to conifer, the natural crop.

Boreal rainforest seems untouched 
if not for this soft-spoken wall.
She swears she can hear slice of axe, grunt of ox, 
echoes of great-great-great grandpappy Caleb. 
In these crevices she can sniff 
smears of his sweat, stains of his blood. 

Stones break loose, tumble among duff. 
“Roots topple walls,” she says touching my hand.
Shooing a lizard she gathers bits of moss 
to stack in a jar like little green toupees, 
to carry back to the dirt road, the SUV, 
the long easy drive to the suburbs.

Midwives tell us birth is natural, not medical.
A deer in the forest has no midwife.
Let us make no judgment but this doe died mid-birth, 
this doe in this ditch sprawled 
on its side in cookie-cutter position 
with belly chewed open, entrails scattered 
around the half-born babe, 
tawny-speckled head and shoulders in daylight
as if leaping from the squeezing womb, 
eyes open to flies while the hind legs, 
the damp tail will wait forever inside. 

Little fawn, did your leap begin before puma appeared?
Had it stalled — was doom foretold? 
Was your breakout the last reflex of dying muscle?
Which began first, birth or attack?
And where waits the soul?

We protect mountain lions 
from hunters in these redwoods and yes, 
we need to control the deer population.
And the human. Probably one crouched cougar 
watches right now from the bushes nearby, 
guarding the kill. They rarely speak, these felines, 
in silence they hunt to feed their cubs, 
in natural splendor they commit murder and abortion 
though they wouldn’t call it such 
and neither should we, 
at least not among lions
but oh mother, 
oh fawn.