The nature of forest

something to dive into...

This has been a difficult time of low energy and poor health, so I look each day to the forest where I live for reassurance and inspiration, both palpable at this time of year. To honour these natural gifts I’ve received, for this post I’d like to share a short steam of consciousness piece on the nature of forest. As well as appearing on the page, it has been exhibited on the theme of Breton landscape and performed as a spoken text. So please dive right in to this sylvestrian surge...

FOREST

forest a place of passage not destination through not to full of lost noise scraping knapping rhythmic tapping echoes of a handmade world that’s gone leaving scars and wounded rocks to earn their living in another way by being still around the wedges of damp old air inside the folds a place of transformation illusion and shape-shifting like theatre with unseen eyes watching in the wings wise to enchantment understanding shadow not substance glimpsing only the moment after movement the leaf left trembling a curl in the water a place of concealment secret shelter lair a lick-wound sort of refuge for outlaws and hermits and lovers to hide and pretend to carry their quest beyond adventure every ripple of contour nurtures a fall of stream trees sprout from the very rock in a relationship of faith where boundaries are blurred and one thing may become another in the twists of path wandering away with a tricky hint of light ahead and without direction finding the way is the challenge and those who do not get out the desperate nonchalance of youth killed stone dead have unlived futures celebrated by an obituary of birdsong in a place of not telling and false assumptions because truth is not the top layer in forest there is always a trap or hidden trouble blood on the bark if offers the meaning of within and a lesson in dying at its best towards the end it knows how to do die so very well