Handmade Paper and Poetry

Ways To Write the Forest

On a cloudy day when you can look straight up and see how tall the Beechwoods grow gray into the sky. With your eyes closed, listening so that you write off the page into the water that rags the rocks, the wind that irks the leaves. By copying the fingerprints on the bark of the haunted apple-trees, marking the fingernails that have dug into forest life before you. With your nose stuck in a guide book, stepping over disregarded orange cup mushrooms, trying to identify a leaf shape. On your knees. In rhyme. Cryptic searching to disturb under the moss, bark crevices, rotting logs. With crayons, holding them like a child and making large disproportionate letters. On the fallen feather of a yellow-rumped warbler, where there is only room for a short haiku. To the fluted theme song of a Baltimore Oriole. With the intention of sucking out the sap. After tasting wild blackberries, your purple hands smearing the paper. Before you have pity for the forest. When you see a garter snake slither limbless and smooth. With a desire to capture the feel of safety beneath the canopy. In awe. Like a maniac, crazed for the beauty of wild pink geraniums, so simple and alive. With plenty of questions. While inhaling deeply. In the morning when you haven’t fully left your dreams. Before you have eaten so that you are hungry. In a way that compels, in a way that reaches.