Dereliction

Here’s a poem from my recent collection Guerrilla Country, available from Flight of the Dragonfly Press.

Dereliction 

We learned the forest
long before we learned our books:
heard woodlarks, cuckoos, jays,
watched roebucks, martens, wolves,
each in its place and in our secret places—
hillsides, hilltops, streams and dips.

We learned that trees brought down
become a space for sunlight, 
seedlings, tillers, scents and sounds;

that canopies of beech and oak 
and angled beams of dancing light
make way for vistas, brambles, willow, 
birch, then beech and oak 
and angled beams of dancing light;

that a loved and loving land 
is always moving tirelessly
from sun and sound to quiet shade,
from quiet shade to sun and sound.

Our land’s become a hungry, dull-eyed fox
made ragged and thin by mange
and hunched in the edges 
hearing and seeing nothing;
limping to nowhere, 
too tired to be afraid or unafraid.