The problem with the forest is
It's full of dead things.
That tree is a standing corpse,
Either there to haunt
Or maliciously drop great palsied limbs
When the wind blows;
That mushroom feeds on unburied dead,
Providing rot in lieu of dignity.
Those specks of scattered white
Once provided frame for an opossum;
Now they're just its memory,
Left over from the buzzard's feast.

The forest is full of cannibals,
Earth-dwellers eating each other
As though there were nothing to do
Except consume and be consumed
And has been nothing since the day
One single-celled, DNA-inspired blob of chemicals
Developed the capacity to devour
Its cousin once-removed.

May we go?
I'm not hungry any more.
Let me lie down
And pretend to take sustenance from the sun,
Imagine myself sharing light
And not required by the very fabric of the Universe
To digest my neighbor.
 

2/29/2000

Index    Winter Complaint