Words in the Woods
All the words that have been spoken here
Over time, over centuries: they stay.
We hear occasional echoes, think
A bird has chirped or a cricket,
But it was a moment of laughter
Happy enough to be here still
Even as the years themselves are gone.
A glint in someone’s eye, a quality of light—
Something, something made one say words
To another, and they laughed.
Words spoken have some slight weight:
As they go forward from the mouth, they fall
In a slow arc over time. But they do not go—
In falling they are in the humus that feeds the trees,
And in their time they enter the trees
And are the trees, so that the limbs
And the leaves of these trees, this shade
Is that conversation, so pleasant, so long ago.
