Let me fall down into leaves and soil, the colour of scarlet, deep into the
eternal oak of earth, the hollow, the fill of my decadence.
Let me lay my head to rest on your large limbs, let my feet become your roots,
weaving, engulfing. Let my hands find your topsoil, the dig deep of my desire.
Let my feet become your roots, limbs for branches, an aching, arching trunk.
My back bends and gnarls and snatches light from sleepy, passing clouds.
I slumber. Not asleep, dream-awake. And you, my lover, my forest, a precious
blackness I enter to decorticate.
Walk by, and find the girl lying on the ground, the forest floor and autumnal
leaves her precious grave. Peonies, her pillow. Darkness, her reprieve.
March 25, 2020
ABOUT THIS POEM:
With everything that’s happening right now in the world with COVID-19, I yearn for the Black Forest … But maybe that’s what this is all about? Social isolation is giving Mother Earth a break?