I wrote this in late winter. Today, it’s July; the woods are richer green than the watercolor and as impenetrable as the woods in the last stanza.
Our woods today are mottled grays—
rich in shades of blacks and browns,
where stalks and stems
and thick barked trees blend down
into the wintry camouflage of earth
that nurtured them in seedling birth.
Soon tender reds and trembling mauves,
faint yellows and young greens
will contour, drape and screen;
spring’s brush will change what’s darkly grim
of these now bare and boney limbs;
new life will rise to chase away
the dormancy of pregnant grays
shading all our ground today.
The air around the branches
will hum and sing with spring;
new energies will shimmer,
and auras ring all growing things.
And you will dance with me
and I will dance with you,
when the air begins to vibrate
with quickly changing hues.
The sap will be a-rising.
Then—as living veils grow—
I once again will know
these woods are mine on loan alone.
Walls of green will fence my baby forest in,
and walls of green will fence me out.
The ground I see,
so bare beneath the trees today,
will fill with overgrowth to cover
mysteries I shan’t discover.
Bushes and brambles
soon will hide the burrowed-holes—
and I’ll no longer see the lichen’s brown
or all the branches fallen down
or wandering roots’ meandering lines
beneath the living vines
that snag and undermine
uncertain steps like mine
into a wood the wild creatures own.
Summer’s canopies will cover
these bare limbs
till nesting birds can safely hover
and verdant tangles will obscure
the dens and holes and beds
where squirrels, skunks and woodchucks hide
and shade and shadow join, to gilde
within the space
where deer and fox abide,
and walls of green, thick green, will rise
where now I see wide open skies
between our winter trees.
Ginny Emery © 2019
