A cool poem I identify with.

[ferine]

Lost Creek Campground, Wheelchair Accessible Trails
by Melanie Green, July 2001.

I.

Beavers have built this smooth water.
Grasses edge the pond. Wide blades
arc, enter the water -- reflection,
a circle. Lingering beyond the grasses,
alder and cascara. Thin trunks, exuberant
leaves.

Water-striders dash their shadows across
the silty bottom. Dragonfly, a finger
of blue light, comes to rest on the mud
shore. Wings repeat the sun, the silence.
Raven's cry rattles the throat of sky
overhead. Dismantled to stillness, I am
no other place.

II.

It's the spaces
between
the immense trunks
of mountain hemlock
that I've missed.

The forest-weaving
of light, shadow, green.
The scent of needles.
What I loved
and lost, --
returned.