It's Still Life

Strikethrough #5

A Forest Gone

I settle in with a mug of breakfast tea and Mimi’s cake, and begin editing my notes: the small forest of birch and oak beyond the village is gone, leaving only stumps leaving the pale wounds of stumps where the trees once held their ground.

When last I was here, birdsong busied the air and summer had loaned the forest and summer had loaned the forest its green scent, every leaf breathing against another.

Now it’s just broken trunks Now broken trunks lie among the churned earth, roots dragged into daylight, ground torn up for housing while the first hard lines of housing mark out what will come next.

Why here, why with such haste — who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened, invaded, expended when change can dull the sun to yellow when change can gather like cloud over the sun and turn even noon the colour of old brass.

My thoughts are not for repeating; they are a grey to smoother they are grey enough to smother speech, a slant of cold laid across the bare ground.

And if I could, I’d lift this scratch from my eye, draw the sky down close, and cover every wound in the deepest snow.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story, including the word: Loan.  ©Misky 2006-2026. Inspired by a dVerse Poets prompt using “Who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened, invaded, expended.” is from the poem “In California: Morning, Evening, Late January,” by Denise Levertov.