Thompson Island Trail, in Fall

Deer crackle and flit into the pathless woods,
where our sons want to explore,
where the sign says don’t. The marsh
is flooded today as we cross the footbridge.
No, not flooded—full. We can hardly see
the mussels under the rushing water,
but we know they’re there. We walk through
the giant hardwood forest, the stands
of loblolly pine. The fallen oak, rotted and rich
with lichen and turkeytail mushrooms.
At the trail’s end overlook, the fiddler crabs
scuttle and glitter blackly in the marsh mud,
their unwieldy single claws upraised,
impossibly invented creatures.
Yes, you can go off trail, we tell our sons.
We watch the crabs, the marshgrass, the abandoned
red rowboat. Our dog pulls to keep going.
Behind us, the boys are climbing a tree,
their voices sharp as they bicker. The sky
blares blue. An egret stalks invisible fish,
strikes at the water like a snake, swallows,
stalks again. The silence between us
hums with bay-spark and late October.
Impossibly invented, all of it.