The Woods Will Be Back

We won’t mind. By then we’ll be
Free of you or free of us,

Names that can live on our own
Terms, lives in full flight, or dead

Sticks with no one to read us,
No one to say or share us.

By the time the woods come back,
You’ll be, would have to be, dust.

We like to draw them in words,
The ways that they move in us,

And not as the trees they are,
Kinds of lives that will surge back,

Could be as strong as they were,
But still just green cloaks for hills,

The way ferns and weeds can coat
The face of a pond or lake.

For now, we don’t mean those trees.
We mean what woods mean to apes

Who lost their grip, who slipped off
Through the high grass on hind feet.

We mean the dark mind, the rich
World in which small beasts like you,

Can get lost, can starve, be food.
Those woods. Deep seas of their own

Who keep what they get, who keep
To no edge, show no low dawns,

Sun gods at high noons, like spears
Through the green gloom, lights that walk

Like you do, gods with gold legs
That stride through in a few hours,

Long gone by the time night comes.
You made these woods, all of you,

Through us, just as you made us.
Those woods you left are gone now,

Gone or all but gone. They will
Come back once it’s you that’s gone.

As for us, we’re what you’ll leave,
Dream tales from real woods you left

And cut, cleared, pulped, and burned.
We’re our own woods now. We’ll learn.