Trees, in fog

Sunlight fading,

late afternoon,

twilight time,

thick woods, cold,

growing colder, path

forgotten, lost,

stepping into fog, light

then thickening, smells

wet, decay, rot, new

growth, muffled sounds,

then amplified, muffled,

then loud, near, then

silence, deafening:

life.

This poem was inspired by a discussion of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.

Photograph by Wallpaperscraft.

It’s not the woods

It’s not the woods, then;

it’s a lawn, planted like

a carpet, a boundary fenced,

designed to mark and define,

not to keep it. It’s a garden,

bordered in flowers, dead leaves,

earthworms, bees clinging

to the Monarda. No wildness

like then, no place to pretend,

It is what I know now.

It is what I fit, now.

Photograph: Shaw’s Arboretum, Gray Summit, Missouri.

Voices in the devastation

Voices rise and bubble amid

the devastation, singing

a ribald song on the streets

of Dresden, still burning.

Voices rise to the woods,

seeking refuge from the flames,

bubbling like popped blisters.

After the funerals, after

the death sentences, after

the trials and arrests come

the rejoicings, necessary

if not sufficient acts to atone,

if only partially, small twigs,

barely green, barely twigs.

He walked in the forest

of his heart, and found

he was lost, the path

vanishing like smoke

snaking to a dark sky, or

disguised by fallen leaves

blackened in silence.

Photograph: Autumn Fire by Mark Coldren via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.