Anniversary by Kirsteen MacLeod

The sign near Kagawong
says, Look Out. Warning,

or scenic view? Either way,
we’re up a steep road.

All day we circled, off-course
and elated, past goose-plundered

hayfields, old roads
where the crimson heads

of sandhill cranes flamed
above shimmering wheat.

Birds in myth
are messengers. We’d lost

our way, intoxicated
in milkweed air.

Always an unknown road,
with us on it, for twenty years.

You grin at me as the car creeps
uphill, too late to think

about right ways or wrong turns.
We’re here: at the edge

of a cliff, seeing
what we were meant to

ospreys in freefall
writing our story on air

— from Juniper Volume 6, Issue 2