A short traverse through dripping wood
A day self-turned from “need” to “should”
With careful step and tattered wear,
A garb self-sewn to disrepair.
Attention more to I than it
Trees and neurons Christmas lit.

A small respite from fright’d “forth”
A direction, neither west nor north.
An eye paid to the fauna round
A leafy coven that I’ve found.

How cruel that this branch, this tree,
Delivers judgement unto me,
Yet lords and gods, both kings and men,
Peer in from out of quiet glen.
In absence of the critic boys
(Kept from glasses by their toys)
A trunk shall do in place, suppose
Thick spectacles o’er knotty nose.

Each shaft of grass, each gust of wind,
A statement I shall not rescind,
Grudgingly do turn away from me,
Turning to the east to see.

I cannot bed on sodden grass,
Nor bring another through the pass.
These trees make neither hearth nor home,
No hostel in this dewy loam.

So I retreat to linens white,
Woods as fakéd as the sea,
And, though prone, do not forget,
That I and I and I makes thee.