A Way Into the Forest

A Way Into the Forest

Even when life is a euphemism for death
one has the morning sunlight to reveal
that there is a way into the forest,
a road out of town, that had not been
known, that was hidden from sight.
Even in the discovery of daybreak, which is
everyone's discovery and everyone's longing
to become more like dawn, I understand
how my body traps light and song, how the woods
sing to themselves in their windy meter
and I listen to birds in the branches, their chirps
colluding with the breeze. The voices of friends
on the phone are my voice, bright and carefully
intoned, brisk and full. I listen to death handle
each of my friends, thickening their blood
on cold days, standing them up at dawn
to face the mean light with an intention
of surviving that is uninformed by doubt
or desire. Longing is the new shape
of the world. All the old ways of imagining
freedom are the arm of a habit bent on gathering
the light of each discovery as it becomes
the face of a woman seen through rainfall.
I come together with my friends to share
a mind we pass around a fire, filling it with
the stories that evoke the chatter of a song—
sacrifices to the old god whose name is
not remembered.