The Forest: Evening and Morning
With dusk and with dawn the eye awakens
in moments about to come
or in moments just passed;
I was blind from the glare of the day
blind from the black of night.
Now, in both dwindling light and in coalescing light,
for the very first time,
treetops, underbrush brashings,
mosses and moulds and lichen hagbeards,
the hidden webmesh of tender roots,
light-seekers and shade-lovers, all twine
here, where no stories can be untold,
where a live presence alerts sense number six.
This Pollock-wired maze is not a place to go
because I have always been here
in the hour each day fades or comes,
when each heightened sense stirs
a simmered gut-cauldron of adrenalin:
Rilke’s beauty meets terror words
conjure an act of recognition -
once I too was without fear.
Waldeinsamkeit – the feeling of being alone in the woods.
Even death may be allowed to live here,
where I return
this time to stay until it becomes fully dark
and fully light;
in twilight slight but carried sounds take over,
in daylight definition becomes too precise.
This is where dream and nightmare
can both be true, be simultaneous,
stand back to back against the unknown