Series: The Hollow

autumn equinox

a mosquito takes its first steps
walking on water

where water sits
at the head of the hollow
a bench for reflection

the not-rightness of it

this vernal pool collecting
autumn leaves

ecdysis

empty husks of former lives
sink into the mud

train horn

the forest pool’s murky surface
stippled with bubbles

mosquitoes rising
only as high as my knees

still drying their wings

West Nile virus

missing the heart-stopping
flush of a grouse

old charcoal hearth

the last butternut tree’s
mossy corpse

glossy orange
to mark the hatchet-cut scars

property line

beyond the line trees
the same old view

chestnut oak seedling

“leave no trace”

only my footprints now
where spring beauties bloomed

black locust grove

the leaf miners have laid bare
a rich vein of sky

in the purple-stemmed
jungle of pokeweed
last year’s skeletons

goldenrod meadow

forty acres and a wren

the somewhere else
that is also here

ridge after ridge

too big to hide
the spider draws in her legs
and turns to gemstone

ark     ark

so many ways of saying here
in Raven

the aging spruces
still stand where we planted them

their insurgent roots

rings of mushrooms
between the lines of trees

one woodfern waving

shaggy manes

imagine the sweet release
of autodigestion

they must love the milk
that makes them so bad-tasting

milkweed bugs

memorial bench

all the young trees
it shelters now

the fog still lingers
in a funnel spider’s web

deertongue grass

the “creep” in “creeper”

battened to a locust trunk
by a thousand tentacles

the descent beckons
in three directions
old charcoal haul roads

crossroads deep in moss

a ladder of fungi climbs
a nearby snag

namaste means
I bow to the divine in you

lightning-struck oak

it’s not true
that lightning never strikes twice

spears of heartwood

under the green oaks
all the colors of flame

tupelo

too cold to move
the red eft shivers
when I stroke its back

I lift my eyes
to the hillside

dead and dying mountain laurel

a midnight-blue wasp

its white-tipped antennae
palpating the ground

den holes

I knock on the tree to see
if a head pokes out

a breeze shakes acorns loose

their muffled thumps into rain-
softened moss

how great it felt
not to be afraid of falling
in last night’s dream

perched aristocratically
among the toadstools

a cranefly

birch roots
turned stilts

a hollow in the shape of a stump

desire path

deer cutting across
this trench of a trail

raised high in a claw
of upturned roots
an ordinary rock

smooth sandstone

the empty seas of the first
great extinction