California Open Space Poem by Max Reif

If I sit just so,
I can almost pretend
no human has ever
come this way before.

The houses are behind my back
or hidden in the branches
of this grove beside the stream.

The hills beyond are soothing to my eyes,
burnished golden by the sun,
some almost red
this late in summer.

Birds twitter, breezes rustle prairie grass.
A ring-necked pheasant,
as from some 18th century painting,
flies up into a tree as I come by.

But for the sounds of cars,
a lawn-mower, and a plane,

this might be wilderness.


(........10sept3)