My Sin

I hesitate,
Then think I’ll spy
Upon our lives
In days gone by.

But who am I
To retrace old steps
And climb up roots
To a broken fence?

Sommer’s hill
Is steep and still
And bends the birches
Up the hill

Peeling back
White brittle sheets
Where I wrote you poems
With a charred fire stick

We kept them
In an old dead tree
For you and I
And posterity

Many years
Have come between
And tears and time
Have wiped them clean

I’m often tempted
To look and see
But to find them gone
Would be disappointing

I try to think
As I go past
The lifeless tree
Would let them last

But I’d rather visit
In my thoughts
Than climb the hill
And end up lost.