Camberwell Beauty
Camera out, you stalk
a mourning cloak,
avid as a book thief
for that two-page
spread of darkness
glowing in the leafless woods,
you and the butterfly—
both quick to fly but loathe to leave.
And edged in light.
Poèmes sur le thème : forest
Poèmes sur le thème « forest » sur Poets.by.
Harbingers
After months under snow,
last autumn’s leaves
barely stir in the wind,
pressed flat as ears
to the forest floor.
Surely they know what’s coming.
Stones lie askew.
Whatever is beneath them shows no sign
of resting in peace.
Opening
The footprint of the collapsed house
seems hardly big enough
for a closet,
let alone three floors
of moldering furniture
and typewriters full of dead beetles.
Up in the woods, a beech tree
has filled the opening beside it
with outstretched limbs.
Bark Ode
It’s only in strong sun
that the winter woods resemble
a bar-coded label.
Today is gray.
I pause to stroke the bark
of a diseased chestnut oak,
ridges kinked and folded,
ordinarily straight lines
impossible to read.
Primary school
Children in the woods:
at first I mistake their distant yelps
for coyotes.
When did I stop climbing trees?
Views are best when seasoned
with a little terror.
Once I found a dead cicada,
stuck half-way out
of its former self.
Wildstyle
On a low mound in the woods,
two coyotes have left
overlapping turds—
like graffiti tags
made of mouse hair
and small bones.
I follow their tracks.
They diverge in an old clearcut
choked with tree-of-heaven.
The Last Lion in Pennsylvania
First axe then lightning on
a million acres of dry slash:
the state’s namesake forests
burned & burned.
Then flood: with no roots
to hold the rains, hillsides slid,
rivers raged, cellars
filled with ashy gray mud.
The last lion in Pennsylvania
was starving, bones
visible under her hide
when they found her
at the end of a line
of incriminating footprints,
near a rocky outcropping
called the Pinnacle.
Hit the Lights
As long as the lights
stay on, we’re stuck.
You can’t sprout wings
or rake me with sudden claws.
I can’t turn into
a storm-tossed tree
or an otter slippery as sin.
In the light, we are
smaller than life.
Our cries are nothing
but failed words
& our sighs & gasps
might just as well
have been emitted by some
tired engine.
Light always wants
Painted Trillium
Trillium undulatum
Painted lady, late riser,
you rush out of the ground,
get pollinated on the fly
sometimes before
your petals fully open,
so that within one day
after emergence they are
already turning translucent,
your pink makeup fading
as the light-flooded
forest dims to leaf-out.
But that’s your true
element, isn’t it?
The shade.
Even unpollinated
Goldthread
Coptis trifolia
White-lipped anthers
purse & part.
The sturdy styles end in hooks —
it’s not enough to be adhesive.
Nectar pools in the petals’
yellow spoons
above a white dish of sepals,
which shatters in the first hard wind.
This blooming is so early & brief,
the leaves are better known:
like the glossiest strawberry leaves
you’ve ever seen
growing in the least fertile,
most pristine parts of the forest,
far from plow & logger,
Decay
A forest .
A dammed forest .
A concrete forest .
All that enters shall decay .
All shall slowly lose purpose and succomb to the inevitable decay .
Decaying flesh .
Withering bones .
Only dust remains .
Wind takes the dust away . A forest .
A dammed forest .
A concrete forest .
All that enter shall decay .
And no longer remain .
.End.
Homeland
Far away, beyond the green paddy fields
Beyond the thatched huts and palm tops
A hazy gray blending into darker black
Touching the shimmering white clouds
Mountains stand like sentinels.
It has been raining here; the leaves
Underfoot bear my weight in silence.
I pause – leeches, wriggling, reach out
And clamber up my legs; a flutter in the woods –
A bird? A boar? A deer? Who is it that I disturbed?
In the deep forests, everything is dark and moist.
Steam unfurls in the scattering sunlight.
Silently, I watch – across the ridge, a rock shifts –
In awe, with love, oh with so much love, a tusker in sight.
Above my head, Minivets, Scarlet, like flashes of fire.