One more from the Forest series.
One of the-- of course, the log decomp site
is a really famous site.
I didn't write about it the first time I went back.
But I went with a group assessing the project again
last fall, and we were all kind of lying around
on these mossy big trees.
And I wrote this poem, which is going
to come out in an anthology about mushrooms and fungi.
And I thought it was just about me and the forest,
but Lucinda showed you that image of my poor mother waiting
by the door with her purse, as she is waiting to make
her departure, she really is.
I realized after I wrote this poem
that I had really written it for my mother
to hopefully ease her mind.
And this poem is one that has--
as she would say in her histrionic way,
that has shaken her very deeply.
I can only laugh just because of the theatricality,
but the sentiment was genuine.
"This ground made of trees.
The giants have fallen.
I think I can hear the echo of their slow composition,
the centuries passing as note by note
they fall into the forest's silent music.
Moss has run over their backs, mushrooms
have sprung from the moss, mold has coated the fungal caps,
and the heartwood has given itself
to muffled percussion of insect and microbe--
that carpet of sound that gives the forest its rhythm.
A nuthatch twits or a vole cheeps, the scent of decay
rises like steam from a stew pot.
Anywhere I set my foot, a million lives
work at metabolizing what has gone before them.
The day is shortening, and the winter wrens
have something to say about that.
I can almost give thanks that the soil will claim me.
But first, allow me, dear life, a few
more words of praise for this ground made of trees, where
everything is an invitation to lie down in the moss for good
and become, finally, really useful, to pull
closed the drapery of lichen and let the night
birds call me home.