Artwork borrowed from Unsplash.com
Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve: One Year Later
This was once a love poem —"This Was Once a Love Poem," Jane Hirshfield
The trees in the forest preserve are still there
though you haven't walked among them in months,
the wood still stretching for ten miles, autumn
coming again as though someone's lit a match
burning color more than fire. Where you once
entered, the path goes two ways: the one you walked
with a man and his dog leads to scenic overlooks
and the small, distant waterfall. Along the other
you have never gone farther than the boulder
you think of as a friend alone in its clearing.
Those paths are there to be followed just as
these words are, a way deeper in or out. And
while you know where this poem is going,
there is still a building ambiguity in the answer
you receive. But today you're walking no farther
than the city train will take you, taking the familiar
route out of your building, past the mansion on
the corner where you greet the dahlias' starburst
faces, the last roses of summer, remember not
to trip stepping over the withered cicada that's
been on the sidewalk now for days in that
same spot. You can't tell if it's a shed skin or
a dead thing, but isn't that always the way of it?
