green feathers of delicate fern moss
flutter in the breeze

one fallen limb is frilled
with crowded parchment fungus

another with jelly ears
for a silent flock of robins

not seen since autumn
in their rhyming orange

a crab spider emerges
from under a leaf

to run in circles
beneath the accommodating sky

orange leaves
lost in fog
a tree frog peeps

bracken ferns
bleached as old bones
quiver in the rain

pores open
nostrils flare

for the heaven-scent
of ground
after drought

raindrop-
dislodged leaves
flutter down

between rain-
darkened trunks
like bright feathers

as if from
a bird of fire
hidden in the clouds

the rain thickens
drowning out
all other sound

but when percussion
rushes too much
it turns to mush

you could stew in a tin-
roofed house
and listen

treetops rocking
together   apart
in the wind
the too-early chill
of a cousin’s death

*

curled red tongue
of a fallen leaf caught
by a dead twig
without even trying
if dying is an art

*

losing its bark
a rock oak killed
by spongy moths
given over to fungus
sprouts a golden mane

*

autumn’s here
in orange and yellow
black gum leaves
and this world has one fewer
voice raised in praise

which naked branches make
a paper wasp’s antennae twitch

out scouting for a nesting place
hind legs outfitted in safety orange

at the top of an oak curled
like a scroll around its missing heart

two flickers perched a foot apart
engage in a bowing contest

a green sweat bee wallows
through the wind-blown hair on my arm

fresh from a blossoming shadbush
that bridal delicacy

a gnatcatcher’s two-note song
sounds both necessary and sufficient

i step aside for a dust-devil
made of dead leaves

it careens off for another hundred feet
and rises into the canopy

as if the devil intends to re-leaf
not with new growth but old

a project as certain to fail
as May Day will come

putting my phone away
the plushness of the moss

at its greenest now
at the end of a hard winter

a butterfly dances past
like a lost carnival float

the naked trees sway
gray and weather-eaten

i find a habitable hush
in the shade of a pine

though from time to time
a moan interjects

the sound of friction
with a too-close neighbor

a wild lettuce seed drifts
on a pompon of down

up over the mountain
and out across the valley

where every raw patch
of plowed or scoured earth

calls to the migrant killdeer
as an unclaimed shore

a chaos of paths
stops me in my tracks

tumbleweed AKA windwitch
stuck in the icy crust

while moss and lichen
nearby are melting free

touseled but upright
with gray cups upraised

a crushed plastic water bottle
rests like a saint in its icy crypt

the ground shakes
from a coal train

one piece of passing graffiti says
in gothic letters GET OUT

crown shyness as they call it
saves the trees
from foreign entanglements

as shrinkwrapped
in ice they glitter
and shed dead limbs

now in my woodstove
a tongue of flame makes
a knot explode

smoke from my chimney
sinks to the ground
and ghosts off into the forest

where i soon follow
over the ice
with chains on my feet

seeking patches of snow
left behind by the wind
for news of spring

chipmunk forays
out of hibernation
the braided tracks of coyotes

bright green
scraps of moss
dug up by a squirrel

at the heart of a hike
another cup of tea

where a tree frog plays
his solitary gambit

everything drips except the hawk
dropping in after squirrels

through one hole in the canopy
and vanishing through another

at the beginning of autumn
my desire is still green

for the plushness of moss
the luster of rhododendron

and the brownish green
of newly grounded acorns

but what do you hear
above the din in your head

traffic and the rainy forest
their unknowing duet

how an acorn rolling past me has
a different knock for every rock

and raindrops seem more discriminate
when they fall from trees

their patter is a language
known to salamanders

and what do you see
when you put the scroll to sleep

fog envelopes us
and turns the light green

i open my umbrella
like a tattered black flower

the holes in its sky
let the darkness out

and what do you feel
when the craving ends

my lungs go on tirelessly
processing clouds

The section of the woods I call the moss garden was full of death angels today. The camera in my phone doesn’t quite know what to do with them, too deathly pale against the rain-darkened moss — they throw the white balance completely off.

I pass a porcupine just as she’s emerging from her door at the base of an oak. She must’ve heard me coming — her bristles are up. I stop and say Hi in a friendly voice. She gazes back, her beady eyes unreadable, retreating into the tree as I continue past.

I used to say that the porcupine was my totem animal but I don’t make that joke anymore. I let the boutique left convince me that this represented a heinous appropriation of indigenous culture. It’s true that more than once in my life porcupines have appeared like omens or indeed guides precisely when I most needed them. But I am not enough of a narcissist to believe they actually bother about me at all. Occam’s Razor suggests instead that they are simply wild creatures going about their lives, which randomly intersect with our own.

Which is part of the attraction, of course. The ideal guide would ignore me altogether! How dreary to be somebody, as one of my dead role models once said. I just want to vanish like a needle into the world’s haystack.

I should add somewhat parenthetically though that as a poet, one gets used to ascribing meaning to events in nature in a largely playful way, which preserves the autonomy of its actors apart from our narrative webs. This is the power of the lyric mode to elevate meaning without abstracting it from all context in the ummwelt. It’s why I believe everyone should practice poetry. It softens the hard lines between things. Its highest truths always take the form of a paradox.

For twenty minutes after the rain stops, the tree I’m sitting against keeps dripping on my boot. Arching my neck back, I can watch the drop gathering to fall, then feel it on my toes two seconds later: the sort of simple, synesthetic pleasure money can’t buy.

The same tree is dropping acorns, and that too is a pleasure: the minor thrill each time of having been passed over by the angel of hard knocks. Until I’m not, and a lump sprouts atop my head like a lizard’s third eye. I’ll open it every full moon.

in an oak forest whispery
with caterpillar droppings

an ovenbird steps out
on her pink feet

as i drink my pink tea
of sassafras and milk

the sun slides down
a silk thread

whose absent abseiler tracks
a shadow back to its tree

a caterpillar with whiskers
as bristly as a streetcleaner

entering a dark valley
in the bark of a chestnut oak

follows it up the trunk
propelled by its gut pulsing

in sync with the prolegs
from hump to hump

driven almost literally by hunger
a body within the body

that one day will crawl out
with wings and gonads

an overwhelming urge to mate
and no mouth

the female so full of eggs
she will not be able to fly

i finish my lunch
the male ovenbird is singing

a carpenter ant goes past
carrying a splinter