In the Forests at Night
Look and listen. Your eyes:
forests at night, they talk
about old growth
—mysteries—
like the ones hidden in rings
for decades, they talk
in hypnotic veneration.
Spruce, yellow
birch, sugar
maple, hemlock, they talk
about new growth
—possibilities—
like the ones soon dappled
through distant misted roots, they talk
in frolic, frenzy.
Cypress, weeping
willow, Douglas, they talk
about the view from the falcon,
who looks left, who sees
the fog: lavender curl
amidst branches and needles–
who looks right
at the color of dawn
dark, forest green,
burnt umber ocean, pale,
wide over the horizon.
These moments, sudden
living, expanse after expanse,
to look into the thicket at night, your bright
and far down flowers—
how they speak cascades
into dark and quiet
pine, into red
wood yawns of warm—
I learned to never leave a forest.
How the change in the light—
when the sun shouts at the back
of the tree leaves in the late cool green–
now the color of dusty glow,
the color of nightingale–
forest for eyes.
Who goes there, within
who goes there?
The color of sharp
color of sacred
color of tender
of seaweed—
crocodiles open
gulping canopies,
prairie sundries,
deserts blooming,
deep water dark branch
silhouettes, fur-grown and alchemy-wild,
how eager I am,
how lush we become
in your forests at night.
The Tongass
San Bernadino
Flathead
Tonto
White River
Shawnee
Sawtooth
Cibola
Coconino
Green Mountain
Sierra
Sequoia
Chugach
(We Are the West: Embers, Twenty Bellows, 2025)
