Buckeye Hot Springs by Karen A. Terrey Just down the creek lie the ruins of Buckeye Sawmill. I curl around a sleeping dog’s back, late sun sifting the crowns of second growth pines along the bank. How prosperous a place for a warm bath after ripping and planking, the scent of sawdust wafting in the summer of 1861. Yet buckskinned men and roughened horses couldn’t drag away the few ancient cedars or single wall of trunk we passed today gripping the loose ravine with knuckled roots, fragments of old conversation high in the drainages. Extrapolate the forest from tree, tree. The difference in species doesn’t matter, in sleep. The dog and I share a primal warmth of breath and soil. I’d like to think this was how a garden slept before language separated, as our island splits the gentle murmuring stream now, the sucking and trickling of soft absorption, the bank a sponge, and myself, as if spelled. Nearby a young stag is just knowing the velvet brown of antlers no taller than his twitching ears. He dips a narrow hoof and steps across just below our sleeping heads lined up like lovers, leaving no difference in sound. 106 theMeadow
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