Everything is green and uneven,
ferns and stumps lie here and there in heaps—
but still, as children, as younglings, we go the the ravine.
We grope
our way through forbidding, scraggly pines without a map,
down pathways as tangled and dark as the neurons in a brain.
It doesn’t take much of a brain
to know that this is a place that we shouldn’t go to, the slopes are uneven,
the topography, muddy, shadowed, won’t fit on a map.
The shadows beneath the fir trees grow into heaps,
and seem to have a physical shape, that we must grope
around as we head to this place, head to the ravine.
Across the ravine,
the easiest path, though the bark is wrinkled like a brain,
is a fallen fir, stretching from one side to another. We grope
the texture of the bark, make our way across the uneven
textures. Below us, in the ravine, are heaps
of cedars, ferns, the tops of other trees we look down on as if looking at a map…
About the Poet
Christopher M. Edwards is from Washington State. His poetry has appeared in online whispers & [Shouts], and is upcoming in Amethyst Review.
For the first time in nearly five years, Vita Brevis is closed for submission. Read the full story here.
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