2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

The Forest
by Lauren Camp
Standing in a crescent of conifers,
we peer up two hundred feet into limbs and leaves,
this unkempt forest. Trees pitched
and fell while we were in our lives – driving our cars,
screwing, typing, fighting –
the sapwood desiccate and hollow.
Only forest ears heard
as a slump became an open book. The oracle
burrowed, sticking seeds of luck
in damp dens and rotting logs.
Walking between trees, we leave
the season of accomplishment, hold hands
with the summer of patience,
trample over roots and tufts of moldy moss.
The forest is the beginning,
the place we must travel to touch our fortune.
We watch a frog melt into a leaf on a hidden lake;
I become muddy; you climb up
to scratch the sky. Birds nest, drum, reproduce.
We hear mammals, spiders, worms. Each day
the forest swells with victory. It is the law
of the world that we will never see enough.
Santa Fe Literary Review 117