Zigzag

I wanted to walk down to the river, had to pick
my way sideways on the slick path, a labyrinth
downslope. The dead white of mushrooms I’d
crushed while sliding down, shredding at the
slightest touch. The mottled, blood red leaves
under a big-leaf maple. And, a glimmer—bright
brass casing for a .32 caliber bullet, near-gold
against my dirty fingers. It was new not muddy.
I kept it near where a shard of sky resolved into
a crenellated sheet of metal, melted, reformed
around crushed, silvered glass. Buried treasure.
The faint smell of smoke from the damp charcoal
I scraped off the ruins. At the edge of the highway,
at the edge of the forest, a car fire must’ve caught
two trees—one left and sawn down, one burnt yet
still standing. As we are, as we do, in our walking
down to the river, which is itself a kind of prayer.