DEEP LISTENING

 

Entering the forest,
there's a feeling of connection,
of being welcomed in
to a green and peaceful world
where everyone is kin.
 
Tall cedar,
spruce and hemlock,
candelabra snags,
hollow root-beds
for small critters
and mossy, rocky crags,
are homes for the wild ones

- squirrels and owls,
wolf and bear -

there is a kinship
in the forest
all we trees and beings
share.

Fern and salal,
and old man's beard,
mushrooms beside my boot,
fiddleheads and swamp lanterns,
sedge, salal and root;
- nurse logs thriving
with new growth
and ever-thrusting life -
in the forest,
all is hushed
and absent of all strife,

and I, who am the go-between,

from this other-world
to mine,
would like to polish up
the green,
and make the whole world shine,
spread this blissful peace
to you,
in just the perfect rhyme
that will save
these ancient trees
that are
as old and rare 

as time.

This forest
will soon be gone;
the town creeps closer
every day.
I hear
their silent plea,
whispered, so sweet, to me.
I walk its trails
with guilty sorrow,
and turn my eyes away.
Mea culpa, mea culpa
 that I've
no power to let them
stay.

 

Day 18. I used an exercise Elizabeth Crawford gave me years ago, about how to write a poem when one has no ideas. It was posted as a chat at the former Poets United in spring of 2019.