Long Time to Come

Perhaps I wish I’d been listening and watching instead of closing my eyes. Something has led to something else, and I’ve missed the beginning. Death is everywhere in this forest and I can taste it – dead branches, dead crickets, dead mice caught in the talons of night owls. The death of the forest comes alive at night, speaking in the stench of rotten logs, only its shadow left moving.

Maybe each night as black creeps up from the ground, stealing the last light from golden grasses and shiny oak leaves, it tenses my fingers and tightens my scalp. I hold my hand out in front of my face. It completely disappears, and yet I know it is there. My main thought is, get out of this place before something happens to you! Yet just as fear threatens to overwhelm me, I bend my knees and relax the small of my back against a giant tree trunk. The tree twists and erodes into old age, carved into beauty by the elements. She's a place of grounding from which to wander from.