This patch of land is but eleven acres.
Six acres were woods until I let another
three go wild, so now nine acres
stand to serve an island of ecology.
Between here and several other swabs
of trees in eastern Fayette county,
turkey roam, and also deer,
coyote, bobcat, possum, skunk, fox,
rabbit, otter, tree frogs, hawk, owl,
finch, and wren, ground hog,
tree squirrel, Indiana big eared bat,
one million fire flies, raccoon,
turkey vulture, shrew, field mouse,
feral cats, snakes, box turtles,
crawdads, slugs, stink bugs,
mosquitoes, black widows,
dragonfly, monarch butterfly,
honey bees,tobacco hornworms,
termites, woolly worms, woolly
adelgids, emerald ash borers,
southern pine beetles, red headed
wood peckers, stray dogs,
even an occasional
hitch hiker sleeping off the heat
of the US 60 asphalt.
A week after I bought the land, which
is to say a bank allowed my signature
to sign my life away, to transfer to me
what had been “rightfully” stolen
for centuries, city engineers
gathered to discuss the woods on this
property.  The only reason woods
remained was because of the flood
plain in which they occupied.
Surveyors came to measure
for a planned earthen dam,
that would retain water from
the neighborhood adjacent,
and thereby raze the woods
I bought to serve.
They made substantial offers,
were offended when refused,
accusing me of selfishness,
and silly pride.
No poem I write,
or song I sing, or fine wooden
thing I may craft, or house that I
might build for the most
prominent of clientele,
no action I have made or will make,
is as important in the span of time,
as being on this patch of land
soon enough to throw a wrench
into the jaws of the plastic 
sprawl lurching out across
our landscape, one set of
copy pasted blueprints
then another.