Arethusa Arboreal

 

Think darkness,
a lisp of emptiness,
your eyes, two prisms of tourmaline.
Ask your body to carry you home
climbing over a bridge of lichen and seeds
and as your thoughts unwind a shadow,
the memory of tears falling like a sap on the earth,
settle into the fire orange woods, into a river lost in darkness.
Your hands, limbs, will close the canopy.

Emerge obscure as a bone
holding oak leaves into a blue axis
from which you fall, from which you turn.
With another green bath of rain, lose yourself in sleep,
in the river that swallows the sun turning yellow from the light.
Spin part of yourself into a rusty form, a rock in the riverbed,
your heart, a fist of stars thrown between trees.

A black-masked tree frog cries.
The engine of the wind and the cascading song of winter wrens
lifts up a memory of all that you've run from, all lovers.
Silent minutes pass
when you keep track of the comings and goings of everyone,
when fog drips rhythms onto glossy leaves of wild ginger.

On your last night in the forest you cannot sleep.
You drift slowly around the fire, gazing up at the sky.
The old firs whisper in conspiracy. A spotted owl haunts with the moon.
As you lie down you notice high branches robed with fog,
weighted down by the same spell as your body.
Here is the nocturne you wanted,
as if an arrow flew through the offshore breeze
grazed long tendrils of Spanish moss and hit a taproot,
releasing you like Arethusa into the fullness of the springs.