The Meadow

My family and I drove hours one Sunday to see 
a meadow in the mountains of Arizona. We stood 
behind a split-rail fence. “It’s beautiful,” 
my dad said. “It’s for sale. If we had money 
we’d buy it.” And we climbed the fence 
and wandered that acre of wildflowers and ferns, 
ate fried chicken and picked up our litter, 
and went home. 

This image needs a fence, not to keep anything 
in or out, but to designate a crossing. Of course 
you know by looking where the meadow ends 
and the forest begins, but the act of swinging 
one leg and then the other over the fence 
while saying, “This boundary marks but doesn’t prohibit”
is the gesture I require. The place is 
neither pristine nor polluted, neither formidable 

nor inviting, just matter-of-factly somewhere on earth;
despite its for-saleness, the meadow seems to belong
entirely to itself. When I decided to give up lying, 
I made my mind into that meadow; I opened my countenance
like a split-rail fence, nothing to hide and no profit 
to gain except in the exchange of deceit and dissembling
for clarity and candor. Come look, everybody. 
Climb the fence if you’re interested,

but when you finish your picnic 
you must pick up your trash and go. 
I don’t know if anyone takes up that offer, 
but I know that since making it my mind 
has evolved into a place instead of an essence. 
I venture further afield now 
and visit my mind for 
its changing seasons, its open view.