When I lived in the woods I began to hear
conversations that had unfolded
across centuries. Chats, debates, gossips
so long the porch upon which they’d been
whispered surely had been replaced
several times. I often stopped walking
to listen. Deep in the woodland,
ground mossy and sopping from late August
rain, the air rippled with greenish light.
Sometimes there was birdsong,
but in early afternoon they’d be silent, as even
the raptors tucked into hollows or slept
amidst the spray of branches. They’d stopped
flush-cutting these trees decades ago so
the air crackled like a pub past closing time
when every story deserves a telling
and the voices are loud and full
of music and the horizon has grown
blue-black with tomorrow’s morning.