Gale Acuff

Discovered

I'm carving my initials on a tree

with a pocketknife my father gave me

yesterday. My first tool. My first weapon.

I'm leaving a hint of who I am here

by force. I'm not killing the tree but what

was that cry I just heard? Probably just

a bird but it's a new one on me. Crow?

Pigeon? No and no. GA--that's me, or

part. I know who I am but if someone

comes through these woods and doesn't know me then

he won't know I cut these clues. But he'll know

why, I suspect, and that's enough: as if

I've put my mark on Nature--my copy

-right. Yes (mean my initials), I own all

you survey. Not just this one tree but all

its brothers and, by extension, the earth

and sky, bushes and briars and flowers,

birds and squirrels and stray cats and dogs and

whatever other creatures wander through,

including the character who pauses

here and finds the owner of this forest.

Not that he would know where to look. Chances

are he won't stop here at all but at some

strange tree. If I'm discovered it will be

by accident. And I'm not even sure

if I can find this place again myself.

It will be like stumbling on a second

finding. I may wander through here for years

and never see me again, especially

if it's me I'm seeking. Then, in ten years,

say, I'm back in the territory and

I stop to wipe my brow or take a piss

and I look up and there I am, even

taller than I stand. Well (I'll say), I'll be

damned. There it is. There I am. After all

this time. I'll reach to touch the old scars and

recall the pocketknife lost long ago,

perhaps in these very woods. I don't know.

If it's here it's rusted to Hell by now,

going back to what it was before mined

and forged and alloyed and packaged and sold

to my father and then passed on to me.

That's me, too, lying in the loam somewhere

beneath the trees. I shouldn't be careless

and wouldn't want to lose me for life.

Or suppose someone finds it before me,

picks it up and takes it home and cleans it

and slides it into his pocket, finders

keepers? There's something left of me on edge

and I'll bet that it will never wear off

no matter how much it's used. My tool. My

weapon. My birth and my death and a name.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in eleven countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.