Within the forest

It is dusk when I enter the forest. The temperature drops noticeably as my steps lead me from overgrown field into the shade of the trees. In here all I hear is the singing of birds as they make ready for the quickly advancing night. I wonder do I believe anything I say? Am I anything more than a simple projection? Am I just pretending to be some version of who I want to be? I trust that I am searching for some sort of meaning in the world but maybe I am only pretending to have found any.

While I write the mosquitos buzz my ears. On one bush I find a not yet ripe, orange salmon berry. It’s the first berry I have seen since the flowers blossomed and I cannot resist the urge to pop it into my mouth. I grind the small, hard seeds to pulp between my molars.

The mosquitos have chased me off from the spot where I was sitting. As I walk down the trail, I carefully avoid two black slugs as they slowly make their way from one side of the trail to the other. This place has erupted into green since my last visit.

This writing is all too direct, too linear. Where is the myth and metaphor? Somewhere on the other side of the canopy, so many miles away, the Sun is disappearing as we rotate away from it. Is the Sun a god? More than any of us could ever hope to be. I wonder what the birds would say about all of this if we could understand one  another just a little bit better. What I do know is that their singing grows loudest at dawn and dusk, so surely they have something to say about the rising and setting. I don’t know, but maybe they are singing their prayers to the that fiery ball of gas that is keeping all of us from becoming ice.

Tonight I have walked int he forest and pondered the Sun and I have the mosquito bites to prove it.

Walking home

The orange pollen tipped midnight black cat claw of the lupine flower and wind murmuring in the leaves.

A robin sits on the uppermost point of a roof asking questions of the oncoming night.

I smell something like lavender but when I look around, I can’t find it. I try to locate the source of this smell, my nose brushing gently against the leaves and flowers of each plant within reach but I am unsuccessful. I stand and listen to the strange song of the starling; clicks, whistles, and grunts.

A headless statue of the buddha sits in a front yard, hand folded in lap, a metal tree adorning the red wall behind. Next to a pile of rocks, a gray cat lies on its side, head raised, watching me as I write.