Creekstone Press Publications
Excerpts from Second Growth
Prologue
We came for wilderness, bounding trail, rinds of trail
slumping into streambed, river mud hugging our shoes, pulling
ourselves deeper into the forest by its trunks we came—
for the twinge of rain-aged bark in our hands, sunshade
of fir, dogwood, aspen, birch, mycelia
flexing whispers between roots, milk-warm
mewling of chickadees, junco tweets kissing bluest
bluest sky, woodland—sponge-deep, open-pored, moss
soaking in all rough edges of sound, we came—
for the coke-sour glint of strewn bottles, burnt-out cans,
cigarettes for birdfeed, scream of slash piles, scream of skin’s
slow scald by water, ubiquitous drone of the ant-trail highway,
tires screaming in gridlock,
scream of jackhammer, rock drill,
screaming teeth of the tree buncher, forested escarpment
crushed to pulp, slash piles incinerated to char in snow—
we came for boombox static, heartless rock, flatulence
of spun-out tires, the shores of Heart Lake flanked
by a deadlock armament of quads, we came for the quads
belching like kid soldiers as they pass, forest floor
churned to muck, for fish in the lake, reel’s plastic line
and cancer, the body toxic, for the driver
grinning at our tits, we came for the smack
of muck in our faces, we came to see ourselves
glistening from oil pools and mud. There has never been
a time like this. We curl toward the remaining woods.
It took millions of years for this world to adapt
to the toxicity
of oxygen,
and above our heads, aspen
clothed in mushroom shelves—
caps soft as antler down, underside’s
cream-bathed glow—pocket reservoirs
of what’s left of the dawn.