Other people have loved this land before.
Signs of their presence,
in leaning posts and rusted fence wire
are unmistakable. And in the fact
that this is pasture — grass
must have been mowed last year

But something else calls out —
an echo of my footfalls,
generations old, perhaps,
And how this love that rises
from the land
must have captured others

They must have felt held,
just like this, in the sun, the air,
the solitude
and the quiet endurance
of all things living,
all these things that wait
for our full return.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2015