BTT #31: A Death in the Wild

Jilly at dVerse Poets pub prompted us to take a walk in the wild.  So join us as we tread quietly among the birds and darkness and the profound knowledge that we are not the largest thing in the forest.  Here is a link to her posted prompt where the wild things are,full of both quietude and rumpus.  https://dversepoets.com/2018/05/01/lets-get-wild/

 

A Death in the Wild

                ·

A tree grows

Not to be harvested

But to fall

Crashing down

Violently among the straight

Pillars of its kin

With no flat

Stump to gaze cleanly

Back at the

Sun like a

Forgotten tombstone sealing

Roots that cannot find

The body

That has been pressed to

Service as

Lumber or

As paper or perhaps to

Just lie waiting to

Be burned, stacked

In narrow corners

Built to keep

The split and

Fractured portions of timber

Ready, crisp, and dry.

                ·

With a good

Death a tree almost

Seems alive

With friends and

Neighbors tapping and probing,

Visiting not just

To bring clipped

Flowers or funeral

Potatoes

But to crawl

Invading into sinews

To devour and turn

The splintered

Cover of her skin

And then her

Very heart

To the dark soil of her grave

To feed her silent

Children who

Do not intend just

To linger,

But to live

Anchored around her prolonged

Senescence as they

Reach up in

Solemn reflection

Of her form

Toward the

Round edges of the walls of

Swift retreating sky.

                ·

This is how

I found her lying

Silent by

Quiet ways

A maze of tangled eulogy

Hanging softly in

The moist air

Without the burdens

Being felt

Or spoken,

The needs of offspring filled by

Simple presence and

Embrace of

Lassitudinous

Slow resting

Hearts that beat

Now to live untamed but will

Not stay unbroken.

                ·

 – Lona Gynt  May 2018

https://dversepoets.com/2018/05/01/lets-get-wild/

…friends and neighbors tapping and probing… invading sinews… devouring.  True confession time: this poem started growing in my mind as an inverse symmetry to Frank Hubeny’s Poem “Park Shade.”  It is a lovely poem here is the link:                    https://frankhubeny.blog/2017/10/05/park-shade/

 

All rights reserved by Lona Gynt, May 2018.  Attributed re-blogging is welcome.