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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3304 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Sleeping in the Forest Laurie Byro I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly. Mary Oliver Of course, I felt at home here. Once when I waited for you to appear, I filled these woods with favorite things: marmots and chattering birds, logy turtles that burrowed under- ground like gophers. What have we done, love? Buried ourselves in dirt and darkness. I went to sleep. A cobweb of stars I’d strung among the pines blazed the trees like fireflies. Animals ventured out to see what I’d become. A raccoon left his mark, a nose print, against my cheek. A field mouse started a nest in my hair. When the forest wouldn’t comfort me, I’d conjure you who were somehow less reliable. 2 We drove to Newark; you waited outside the hospital on a bench and watched inch by inch the park fill up with snow. Back home, it was raining, or so the neighbors said, happy to fill us with weather. Meanwhile, in the cold, you waited for me beside the gusting air, beside the cries of falling snow. We drove home in logy silence. By morning, I walked among the hemlocks and elms, noting which birch trees bent in half when the rain turned to ice. 3 My breast is a shattered wren. The forest leans forward to listen and no birds sing. We wait for the phone. The long ride home, each with our own thoughts. We couldn’t reach for a hand and break the spell. The rhythm of blades as they scrape a snowflake perfectly formed and force it across glass. Now we know never to trust wishes that fall like cold stars. The woods have turned silent. A wren knits its bones into something other than flight. All those hours empty of birdsong: I wonder what were we thinking? |
