The Forest Knows Change
A Poem
Be careful as you tread deeper,
into a world unfamiliar with difference
but also unaccepting of anything the same.
I miss the unrequested kindness of others.
A time gone as the electricity came in.
We used to share nature, and a fence was
just to keep the cows from being hit by cars.
Now we have no trespassers and private roads.
As a child, you’d knock at the neighbors,
to call your mum about how you’d be late.
Now we are all strangers, with a claim
to what is not, in reality, ours and a sign
that doesn't actually hold the law.
The forest near my house has no birds.
I know this because it took months to call them.
Refusing to live on land that somehow is not theirs.
The trees make up for this absence
with loud shrills and reverberations.
Calling on a time that no longer exists.
I share their melancholy.
