(de)forest

return is a practice of loss.
i take you to quietest part of the forest 
where i used go to worship the moss
& plant my tongue.
i still feel my unsaid prophecies here. 
now though, it is no longer quiet. 
we walk past a tall chain-link fence 
where on the other side,
bodies are building a mausoleum. 
machines scream & beep. an alarm 
sounds like a box cutter through the air.
all around, the earth is torn.
deep scars in the soil. roots grab handfuls
of all the before. 
we walk farther than i ever walked
to try to escape the destruction zone. 
finally we come to a place where
all we can hear are the crows.
you ask me what i think they're saying.
i do not tell you i think they are 
talking about us. they do not remember me.
i want to tell them, "i have tried
to be gentle." they worry we are more people
charting hunger into the old growth.
we find oyster mushrooms blooming
like ancient ears on the shoulders
of an old tree. i like to point out to you
the smallest mushrooms. orange ones
& even blue ones. what i really want
is to walk until i become one.
until my gills stretch & my veil pulls back. 
this is a fantasy of escape. instead,
i apologize to the forest for leaving.
a romantic notion that i could
have somehow stopped the construction.
not alone, i remind myself, 
maybe a flock of us so lush they would
not be able to tell if we were skeletons or branches. 
out here the false divide between us 
& nature collapses gloriously. 
i am not a mushroom but i did come,
as my ancestors did, from a wild root
in the deep belly of the earth. 
drank the sun. worshipped the moss.