— After a go to to the Yaak Valley in Kootenai Nationwide Forest, Montana, the place the U.S. Forest Service has introduced a logging undertaking known as Black Ram
What’s there to be executed now, however enter
in opposition to abandonment, grow to be a hole sound
within the halo of labyrinthine inexperienced, grow to be a crossed-
out phrase on the again of somebody’s hand.
As soon as, all of this grew to become
all of this. One not-yet-golden western larch
curves by a white pine, a white pine
curves by a western hemlock, nobody right here
is heroic. To enter right here is to enter
magnitude, to really feel an ecstatic somethingness,
a nothingness of your personal title.
All phrases grow to be unsuitable. A complete world exists
with out us. However who’s us?
Lichen, moss, grizzly scat, moose hoofprint like two
exclamation factors by the drying frog pond.
How have you learnt you’re alive? What proof
will you permit? So many myths
are unraveling; a yellow swallowtail glides by over
the sinless creek mattress. A storm
wets the pores and skin and we’re stunned we’ve got
pores and skin. Woods’ rose, white-flowered rhododendron,
nothing right here is unfinished. What it gave me? I noticed
a brand new tree emerge out of a floor product of historical timber
on prime of extra historical timber, on prime of extra historical timber,
on prime of extra historical timber, and understood then
that this was how the Earth was made.
This poem seems within the October 2023 print version.
