Praise Song for the Back Side of the Sign

The sign says, “Keep Out.”

The sign says, “Private Property.”

But all along the road, the woods keep calling, Here! Come here!

Step off the pavement and come here, where the ground is soft and forgiving.

Come here, where the goldenrod is blooming in all its many guises and all its golden profusion—wreath goldenrod and Canada goldenrod and rough-stemmed goldenrod and dwarf goldenrod—wherever the sun finds its way to the place where a tree has fallen, or along the track that generations of deer have made with their delicate feet.

Step into the shade and come here, where the broad-winged hawk is teaching her young to hunt.

Here, where the chipmunk has folded its forefeet to its chest and reared up to call its warning chock chock chock to all the other woodland creatures.

Here, where the box turtle trundles into the stippled light of the underbrush, saying nothing.

None of them are talking to me, but I feel the murmuring as a welcome. It is a mother’s hushing of a baby fighting sleep, a note slipped beneath desks when the teacher isn’t looking, a call to prayer across the rooftops in a land I have only visited in books, the notes of a song drifting out of a room with the door propped open.