the trees were humming
your birthday song
the clouds were cuddling you
in their arms
the grass was soft
beneath your head
the flowers decorated
your nature's bed
the wind was soft
on your reaching hands
an empty space
where a mother stands
no worries, though, child
don't be afraid
i will be with you
and come to your aid
a sweet babe
in the woods of forever
keeping you safe
born with a tether
a tether to nature
to all things sweet
i'll love you always
and your darling heartbeat

i couldn't be human
so i made a home
in the woods
i danced with the mist
and ran with the wolves.
i lay on the pine needles
wove leaves into my hair,
perhaps if you come looking
you will find me there.

you heard me correctly darling when i said i was

going camping in the witherness. look in this bag i’ve already

packed sun strokes, swill trunks, an array of emptying

books and a flashlight that projects white moving dogs.

in the witherness, we stack silent burning gavels, achieving

the balance of a permanent new moon. we are arriving

by cheap chernobyl trucks and we’ll know when we’re there when

the engine dies and we open the hood to find a blanket-less

girl. don’t worry, she is environmental. made of mist.

we stomp on her sisters, **** like holy anorexics,

steady our foreheads on the ancient bark of

the witherness (dark hallways in a house of leaves)

Quiet now. lay your spine on eggshells so that your joints

may hatch asterisk chirp double asterisk something

akin to what asteroids do, but with a murmuring whistle

the only noise you can hear at the edge of the witherness.

I want to go exploring in the deep green woods
Where the leaves shuffle past on your feet, on your toes
Where the yellow streetlights and the red ones fade
Deer graze in the cracks at Kensington Station
Birds nest between the wheels of the dead railway

I want your lips against mine in the silence
In these hollow spaces, the reclaimed world
Bark peeling, sprouts, on the wood house beams
Colour of rust and liveliness, womb of ours, heart of ours
Greenboro metal on the slatted tracks

There the floating scholar of green lines read,
There the shading peasant of sun-fields plowed,
There the fleeing empress of coral red gowns,
There the graying knight of frost-broken vows.
A tree is a haunted ruin of bare limbs and rooms.

But thought scurries around like a five-lined skink
With its tail shimmering blue as oil floating on water.

A silhouette against the ground
Striding across its battleground
Watch it as it comes around
Never lost yet never found

A silver streak against the night
A pounce, a ****, with all its might
A piercing call towards the moon
Through the black, ferocious wood

The wolf is a comet, darting by
The wolf is a stalker, sneak and pry
The wolf is the fox of the night sky
The wolf, the wolf with the hunter’s eye

Of the woods it flies, of the moon it sings
It presides over all the forest things
It readies its paw, starts to spring
Soaring across the sky as if on wings

Ferocious in fight
Tenacious in plight
The wolf is a hunter at heart
Never with the night or the woods will it part.

She walks a path with one eye open
She follows a path with one eye closed
Connecting the strings that float around
Like caterpillars
Dangling
From trees
Squirming on their silk
She crawls underneath them
Un-wanting to not disturb the dance
Until she smells the wildflowers.
The other eye closes
Still crawling the path
Luckily,
The bugs have warn it down enough
To follow with her hands and nose.
When she felt the wildflowers on her face
She opened that eye
Excitedly she pealed open the other.
When she heard nothing
She was amazed
In the distance she could see waves crashing through the wildflowers
Once again her world was absent of light.
This time she held her breath.
She laid in those wildflowers
For a long time.
So long her fingers and toes sprouted roots pulling her deep inside the soil,
Grounding her.

They say don't go out walking
in the woods nearby
You'll reach a point where it's so dark
You can not see the sky
It doesn't matter much to me
And here's the reason why
I listen to the wind out there
It speaks to me on high

One wrong turn and you'll be lost
They tell me, still I go
I know where I'm heading
The wind it tells me so
I listen to the wind out there
It say's I'm glad you came
The wind and I are such old friends
The wind it calls my name

Elemental friendship
From another time
Silent Conversation
No words, just thoughts in rhyme

Snowy winter afternoons
out walking all alone
Making trails for no one else but me
I listen to the tree and how they groan
The wind it makes them talk some
Not one tree sounds the same
The wind and I are such old friends
The wind it calls my name

The darkness closes in so fast
The winter days are short
Walking on in silence
Like a library or court
The wind says night is coming
Go back from whence I came
The wind and I are such old friends
The wind it calls my name

Elemental friendship
From another time
Silent Conversation
No words, just thoughts in rhyme

If you go down
in the woods
today


Dont go alone
Dont go alone
Better stay home today

Dont expect them to play fair
It's criminally legal

If there's a hunter
then there is hunted

If you go down
in the woods
today

Stay on the path
Stay on the path
It's best to stay home today

You dont stand a chance
run as fast as you can
You wont see
the end of the day

If you go down
in the woods
today

Cover your ears
look straight ahead
Better stay home today

I've heard this somewhere and
i sense it to be true , that
   trees can communicate
in some bizarre language
   and they feel the pain
when we cut them through .