Forest

Nothing in the night
is darker. Here the heavy

absence of light is twofold:
without and within.

Without is the lost moon,

carried away by all the forces
you cannot understand. You may pretend
there is reason—that something wants
the light somewhere else, that the moon is only

gone because you are not able
to see where it is. These are the comforts
we seek, occurrence

and their cause. But within is how
the colors of forest

are dark from beginning. The redwood did not want
the shadowed hues of its soft bark to soak
itself into the night as it did, bleeding
black into the air. The tall ferns waving

in silence over dead

dry needles still pray
for a secret
luminescence of which
they were told
otherwise, yet no thing that pushes

out from the damp brown earth

can bring with it
light. That is for something
else. The manzanita

knows this already, it has no desires for
anything it is not. Look at how it sheds its subtle
bark to go naked
in maroon, a red that plummets
the dark of its narrow
twisted trunks, so smooth that even in
the lightless night you know its cool
skin by the touch— can feel

from the surface what pale green it keeps beneath,

untrue until spring. And when they find you here,

knocked loose from yourself by the weight of the dark
like a limb grown too heavy too far
from the tree, what will you tell them?

They will hear none of it.

You will have to trust that only the forest
has heard. It is better that way. This is what
you will tell yourself.