Forest Edge
Woodpecker tap from the dark in
the dark. Blue birdsong in the old growth.
There’s a landscape underneath
that Earth couldn’t dream into life, and a layer
of moonlight trapped between history
and future. The deer have evergreen
hearts, the foxes
fire for tails, and there’s a slender path raccoons
follow to drink water
that drips from the stars.
Those mornings the mist wakes up before the sun
there comes an ancient asking
of questions relevant to how
a forest is to be addressed when doubt
hangs from the needles in the pines.
Crows break the silence,
black voices on grey
and when they move on they leave
their calls on the high boughs,
hanging to dry.
Lost thoughts and sunlight, yesterday’s lightning
lying down in the forest
and lizards slip out of their scales
as they run, stop, run and whip
any moment that dares chase them
back where time doesn’t count. Centuries lean
against moments, and moments
stand firmly grounded
come dry years and wet and the memories
groundwater has of the once
when it was rain.
Morning on the forest floor, already
evening in a hawk’s eye
where he floats above a clearing
between pines. He sees the world turn from where
he is, while time is still; or time
turning around in a world so still
he grabs light with a claw and can
hear the trees talk.
Give a shadow a chance
it will fly, be a nuthatch, a grosbeak, a flake
of the moon. Forest present, forest past, forest
mysterious. It’s beautiful
to be lost here, to find a way so deep inside
that north is south, blue is green, the sky
the earth, ancient new, and wild
has no tame to be
compared with.
A splash of sky between
the pines , day’s end, ground on the run,
summer’s dark breath
soaking into the earth as an owl
claims the moon for her own.
David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix. Over the decades his writing has helped him adjust to the desert and its wildlife to the point that he now considers the desert to be the best teacher of making use of limited resources, whether natural or artistic.
Amethyst Review 