Skip to main content

Forgotten Forests

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for Sunday Muse #197.

Photography by Kristine Wayman

My hand was not shaped for the axe
so it waited--tooth in the tough wood;
back of its head warm, then hot, then cooler;
body dreaming of wood made useful.
When I brought it into the garage
and left it, carefully, in a corner,
it dreamed of being outdoors,
felt the thin frame of the garage,
the restless former forest underneath,
and, then, it was just an axe.
Silent, dreamless, and inert.
Our forests are long forgotten. 

Missed y'all last week! 

-- chrissa

Comments

  1. Carrie Van HornFebruary 5, 2022 at 8:18 AM

    We missed you too my friend! This is a deep and lovely ode to trees and all the ones long since gone to axes in greedy men's hands. It always saddens me when I drive by a large property where all the trees have been taken to accommodate a shopping center or neighborhood. It really is sad on so many levels. Beautiful writing Chrissa!

    ReplyDelete
  2. indybevFebruary 5, 2022 at 8:24 AM

    It saddens me to see a tree cut down. Land developers are heartless and greedy, destroying much of beautiful for one more lot, one more house. Point well taken.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JimFebruary 5, 2022 at 8:27 AM

    Chrissa, I am sorry your axe has gone still and dreams no more. Such a nice write to read this morning. I've got stuff in my garage, some used and some not. Biggest bulk is two Ford Mustangs, a 1974 and a 1998, disabled but wanting to be on the go. No, wishes to go fast but doesn't chop wood.
    ..

    ReplyDelete
  4. FireblossomFebruary 5, 2022 at 9:00 AM

    I was thinking of the wooden handle of the axe, too. I really like the way you wrote it, Chrissa. One of my favorites of yours.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sherry Blue SkyFebruary 5, 2022 at 9:32 AM

    This is really clever - seen from the axe's perspective. I loved it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. ms_liliFebruary 5, 2022 at 1:27 PM

    Such a melancholy atmosphere. I feel bad for opportunity cut short and then forgotten.

    ReplyDelete
  7. HelenFebruary 5, 2022 at 4:01 PM

    Stunning poem, Chrissa! Stunning.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sunra RainzFebruary 6, 2022 at 6:21 AM

    I enjoyed your musings on the journey of the tree, and those final two lines finish it beautifully:

    "Silent, dreamless, and inert.
    Our forests are long forgotten."

    ReplyDelete
  9. qbitFebruary 6, 2022 at 10:11 AM

    Oooh! "body dreaming of wood made useful." is fantastic, and "tooth in the tough wood" is such a rugged image. I love you brought it around to the forest no longer there, that made a powerful ending.

    ReplyDelete
  10. TruedessaFebruary 6, 2022 at 11:22 AM

    I never really thought of the wooden handle of the axe before in that way. Strange that a product of a tree is used to cut down a tree. Welcome Back...

    ReplyDelete
  11. .February 6, 2022 at 3:29 PM

    Powerful. The last line made me appreciate the forest near our town even more.

    ReplyDelete
  12. purplepeninportland.comFebruary 12, 2022 at 4:55 PM

    This is wonderful poem, and comment on our society.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...
15 comments
Read more

The Soul and The Spine

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low,  eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe  so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes  she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches  between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small  not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...
14 comments
Read more

A Single (Terrible) Poem

 I did not buy the poetry book whose sample Was page after page of essay and praise. I'm not following the trumpets. Today I follow the ringers-- Huzzah and call out the streets! Lift your arm, swing the bell; Call out the quiet, call out the neat Call out the loud, call out the bold Call out the wrong, call out the wise We remember the bells We shiver the skies.    This isn't about...anything. It's not about nothing. It should go without saying that a poem shouldn't need an essay or a textbook to be what it is. And I'm not sure why, with a stack of poetry at hand to be read, one silly Kindle sample (and writer's block and anxiety and...) would push my buttons so badly. But seriously. Where is my parody book full of fake blurbs that runs for 50 pages and ends with a single (terrible) poem?  -- Chrissa
11 comments
Read more