Edge of the Woods

What is not here is here
every day:

the boulder huge and peaked
is not after all a house
gray in the shade of the woods,

pines and hemlocks huddled close
to what is not its foundation.

And the lower rock, squat,
on second glance is not a shed
hoarding its tools, supplies,

stone feed for the birds,
stone seed for the lawn,

a whetstone to sharpen
every stone blade.

Farther down the road
it's hardly a boulder at all

that is not a deer, bending its neck
to root beneath the snow.

(First published online by the NH State Council on the Arts; first published in print in NH Arts.)