I see forests

I’m blind to trees until I really look at them.

They’re gorgeous, but

I see forests. I think in forests.

I love trees and have studied trees and my best friends are trees and I’m one.

But my brain doesn’t work in trees.

My brain works in forests and streams.

I can look out over a forest and see what is wild and what is overgrown and what is rotten.

And I walk right past trees calling out to me..

I feel like an ent,

Like a being cursed to belong and labor, but never fit.

To live in this house, to care for it, but never feel at home.

I am the tree without roots who sees the forest.

I smell the rain and the smoke.

I taste the ash and the sweet tinge of saw oil.

I can’t convince the trees

the ash and oil comes for us.

They don’t even vote for the axe anymore, we do.

So I give up and sit where they don’t attack me as much.

My limbs and mind grow moss.

The world slims and narrows and squats as I rust.

Plants grow under and leaves build up around me for a time.

Until the next storm.

Trees bend and sway and creak, but have broad, woven roots.

I don’t.

It let’s me wander.

Frozen with ivy and moss and rust and leaves and sprouts and gloom bloom isn’t roots

Storms blow me over.

I fall,

Trampling sprouts

scattering leaves

Flinging moss

snapping ivy

grinding rust

My senses erupt with pain and noise and flying dirt and rust clouds.

The forest erupts with criticisms and concerns and judgements.

The forest sees me fall and thinks me a tree.

The forest sees me as fallen, likely lost, likely to die.

But the storm has pushed me back out into motion, my place.

And the trees think I’ve died.

I couldn’t convince the trees of the storm

I couldn’t convince the trees of the axe

How can I convince them of me

So I walk

and see more.

I see forests.