suspense (for Hope)

Early summer after full leafing,
when afternoon light is seized
and tangled up in old boughs,
when the forest is drowsing
and dreams oddly, wordlessly,
she walks into apparent gloaming.

Some people are drawn to woods
and burden branches with musings.
They further dapple dappled ground --
where mosses and mushrooms languish --
trespassing pridefully in fancy moods.

She walks alone into apparent gloaming,
for bare listening and for open wonder.
An unseen bird in the secret hardwood
flutters leaves as it makes up an aria,
then goes swiftly on wild missioned wings
through this godly air of old mystic pallor.

She walks alone in upstate New York,
on a pathless path of her own invention.
The ground is brushed with brambled time,
a chaos woven through the riddling ochers,
where trunks of elm, chestnut, and maple
go dense with slow patience and waiting,
then spread a canopy of alien suspense.

The temptation is strong for daydreaming,
many people are seduced by themselves.
But this woman walks outside of her ego
and pauses to look into shafts of light.
She thinks of nothing, pausing to sense
how forest moments go by themselves.

She comes here to blend into the strange.



Copyright 2011 -- Tim Buck