Properties Pastoral

by Leslie LaChance

The deed – absurd abstraction
               metes & bounds –
ridiculous.
            The tax man?
Also ridiculous.


How about
        we measure the young cedars
                 straying into the brambled pasture
by the spring?

Mark the hay wagon's height –
     tilted there, wheel-less
               by the tipsy wall. Record
how the grey boards shrink each season
      splintering down through the thorns.


The orchard's invisible,
the apples – golden ghosts.


Count the rustic
        vacation homes sprouting
on the opposite ridge.

Harvest cattails.  Blackberries.
                     Wild blooms.

Listen.


Jet plane.

Leslie LaChance lives in Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in Juked, Apple Valley Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and elsewhere.