Thursday, April 24, 2014

24/30: in this forest

Someone in my Facebook news feed referred to his pain in passing as a forest.  So I went all the way there.  He was speaking mostly about chronic physical pain, I channeled mental illness.

In this forest the tree trunks are wide
as nightmares.  In this forest I try
to walk through but my feet stick
in the muck and the branches are all arms
with a raven's grip.  In this forest
the wildfire moss soaks up all sounds,
even ones I imagine, a silence
so thick it's blinding, and now I've lost
all sense of direction.  The canopy becomes
its own night sky, no sunlight for so long
I've forgotten how it feels on the skin
and can't care.  The muck begins
to resemble the warmest of beds, and in
this forest I lie down, held by so many
ravens' arms.  Gravequiet moss
for a blanket and a night too black
for stars.  I open my mouth to yawn
and out sprouts a sapling, growing faster
than any bad dream.

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