Dryad

photo by Rosie Hardy

Come to the forest

Come when your heart is as full as the moon

and your desire blazes like a shooting star

Do not fear the sentries;

 they observe your entry

but ignore trespass

when intent is pure

Search out the message that I have written for you

in the trivialities of veins in the leaves

Read its significance

with your fingertips

You have always touched wood

wishing

I am waiting 

with your answer.

submitted for Poets United, Vice Versa #6

and Poetry Jam, Daydream Believers

Dangerous Things

Hodnot Spring House, Leakin Park, Baltimore, MD

Deep in the woods where black gum grow

Where children should not go

We have a place that is our own

The grown ups never know

When we go back into our woods

Adult rules don't belong

What we do we do as one

and we are never wrong

Some things you just don't speak of

Some things best left unsaid

You keep some secrets your whole life

They die on your death bed

The gang it always will protect

We watch out for our pack

But if you strike out on your own

you better watch your back

What we see in the woods that day

No one knows what's true

In the creek lay silently

a man that we all knew

Around his head the blood it pools

an accident we said

We leave him there right in the creek

Cause we know dead is dead

 

Some things you just don't speak of

Some things best left unsaid

You keep some secrets your whole life

They die on your death bed

(inspired by the book The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman)

The Forest Edge

source

I wanted to walk in the forest with you

I took your hand

We stepped to the edge where vines grew thick

and flowers smelled sweet and dangerous

like the perfume we purloined 

from your mother's dresser

As our lips touched

I swear I heard the dryads sing

and I ached to follow but

you turned away

laughing

How many times

have I returned to that day?

How many times 

have I tried to find that mossy forest entrance?

But the path is closed

In its place, a tangle of dried brambles 

and withered blooms

scentless

like a dusty bottle of evaporated perfume.

submitted for Poetry Jam, Where Is Your Forest?

Where The Wild Things Are Not

image source

I went for a walk in the woods the other day

and found a large, white paper band across the trees

"Sanitized for your protection" it read

The trails had been swept free of mud and leaves

and were paved with astroturf

Insects had been eliminated and replaced

with cute googly eyed clay replicas

The trees were all trimmed and

the animals had been bathed and deodorized

Apparently too many lawsuits

over poison ivy rashes, animal bites, and twisted ankles

had nearly bankrupted the National Park Service

This way was much safer for everyone

I started to cry

and an animatronic chipmunk offered me a Kleenex

then pointed its tail toward a green trashcan
and hand sanitizer

Laughing, I tossed the Kleenex on the astroturf and left.

submitted for dVerse Poets Pub, dVerse Poetics, Wild