New Year’s Day

The mountain crests
in the cradle between night and day;
the brilliant moon 
making metals of the rocks 
and trees, the path a 
thin trail of silver. 
Glaring pitch-dark against the 
beam of my headlamp, sending chilly waves through me,
knots of ice under heel. 

A crowd of us loop through
the trees to glimpse
the first light of new year’s day,
voices catching
across the woods. 

It feels secret and lucid
to be out in the night,
and my breath misting white. 
Like a translucent dream, 
something to trail your fingers through.

I want all at once to be
deep, deeply alone,
sunk into the silver chains
of the trees, beside
moon pools in spills of rock. 

I think of Jack Kerouac, 
in the middle of the wintry night,
sitting on a floor of snow
to meditate and think wise-man thoughts;
and the ecstasy he found in this,
the solitude kept in the company of trees.

Finding solace in the
star-songs,
truths of whittled history
whistled through the
bare bones of
their breasts. 

The Pinecones

The Pinecones

 

I approached a trail, breath loose in my lungs

as I prepared for the epoch ahead, soon to be colored by the gentle green of the forest.

As I started in, my eyes lifted to the branches

that manifested overhead;

and on their limbs lay the ornaments of the forest.

The very cones that christened this land, the “Pine Tree State”.

They drooped from the trees,

copper spines unfurling like flower petals;

yet without delicacy.

Instead built ruggedly to be tenacious against

the frost and heavy snowfall,

compressing wreaths of floral aroma into

the tight, sweet smell of pine,

so clear it evaporated into the air.

As I continued, the burnt yellows and oranges

of leaves lay bloodlessly on my path,

and soon my footsteps overturned them,

revealing thousands of pinecones…

blackened by the dark growth of the ground.

Suddenly, they were no longer ornaments.

They were the discarded debris of the forest,

tossed from their mothers once deemed obsolete in their age.

No longer did it bear the lingering promise;

the tender life of another tree knitted tenderly into the green fibers of its youth.

Ephemeral.