(for Donna and our parents)

I never expected to see it,
much less run across the road
on a trip home through
the mountains,

but came upon it veering off
Omo Ranch Road, this forested
piece of property our parents
bought decades ago,

sold to the neighbors
after our mother died,
a parcel I saw only once
upon a long time ago.

But there it was:
Slug Gulch Road, the green sign
proclaimed, aiming tree-high
below the pines.

And as the one behind
the wheel in what had been
my mother’s car, I said,
“Gotta see this,”

though I didn’t know where
their former five acres lay.
Still, faith drives more often
than I do, and when the road

wound past the neighbors’
name on a mounted sign,
I knew that the pines stretching
skyward next door

and the soil in which they
grew once had our parents’
names embedded in it. I
stopped, got out, took photos

of the new “no trespassing”
sign, the reminder that we have
no claim to this land—nor
do we want to.

But squinting into the sun
fireballing through the trees
on a summer afternoon, I
wasn’t sure what cosmic forces

had conspired to bring us together
here, only that we had somehow
gathered in this spot for just
a moment,

before I drove on
into the rest of this life,
the one they gave me,
the one I thank them for

again and again.