The man has fawn's ears, alert,
inquiring as a wild child, pawing delicately through underbrush
in search of something green;
experimenting in necessity
or the possibility of truth.
Tomes of dead leaves have fertilized the ground
on which he listens, observing air and sun in which
the green bush, the stunted twisting roots grow on
in various shapes,
affronting startled time,
whose genesis may have been direct and uncomplicated.
Time is not arrested here, but pushes through
in weird and ugly limns of pain,
leaving a sense of history, of wrecks and wars
and frail human decency.
He listens for truth and sees the past
grow lichens and green moss and softening implacably
the rock above the cave in which the shadows hide
and reach their voices out and call
the frantic air, stripping
words of their folly, cleansing
muddy streams of drifting leaves
and the small dead.
The clawing roots stir underground and settle
into living earth.
Fearful lives inhabiting this wood
move through the trees, and come
in search of food.
© 2010 Charlotte Merrill Jensen
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