The mountain pass was dreaming it was
The recent past condensed and evaporating
In a memory palace of every forgiving forest
Ever healed its wounds and closed its canopy
Over the sawtoothed dreams of its children
Again and again and again. It was green, dark
Green, mostly, with floating silver shawls.
One hundred-twenty thousand years ago,
Neanderthals ambush-hunted fallow deer
At close quarters with wooden thrusting spears
Beside a lake in closed canopy forest like this.
A nifty trick for a hominin, to survive in this.
Broken woodlands, coasts, and grasslands
Were what our ancestors’ bodies evolved for,
But the mind of a biped contains its own beast,
And that beast wants to flee into the woods
And lose itself as the monster guarding them
While wanting those woods to be itself, to turn
Inward into the woods more closed than any
Trees, however triumphant, could ever be.
These trees hide woods never were these trees.
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