Drowned Houses Reservoir, Utah, 20 March 2017

And if I were not actually there, wherever
And whenever it was I said I was? Or it's not
True. I did not walk into the forest. The forest
Returned around me. I never knew trees
Could grow so fast or that I could breathe so
Slowly. In the event, the trees surrounded me.
By the time I noticed they were closing in,
They had ambushed me. It was so dim
At noon it was like being down a well,
Almost like being underground. Then, you
Could say, being you, once I started to move,
I walked in one direction, further in. Body
Was lost in the shadows of trunks, roots,
And branches. None of this made any sense.
I had never made any sense, rarely made
Nonsense, usually made only pretense.
There are two ways of getting lost
In the woods. One used to be real, but it's
Hard to do anymore. One was a secret.
I went out into a sunny, desert day
In the brilliant southwestern American spring
And sat down against a lichen-browned rock
And waited. Nothing much happened, but
Soon it began happening closer to nothing.
A tree muscled in, gnarled branches
Distending. Another. Another. Another.
Why did I wish to bear forever the noise
Of these, more than another noise close to me?
I was back in the world that never existed,
Where woods could be like water, and these
Were like deep, cold water curled around
My head, not pines, not flowering, not
Towering cedars or oaks. Night trees, trees
Of the night fall. I was walking underwater,
At the bottom of a wooded lake. Sunken
Limbs settled into my drowned houses.
You knew, you said, I was down here.