Those Dark Deep Woods

 Some days I'm running through a forest fire longing for the cool waters of the peaceful creek. With the thundering of each foot I can feel the dirt's depression beneath my feet. The clean forest air battles against the smokes is thickness.  In my mind the daylight and the night war against each in the sky where the orange sun contends with the red moon for supremacy. Branches and twigs gouge for my eyes but momentum and resolve forces their joints to give way. I can hear the crackles and pops as the trees themselves cry out from the flames dancing across their skin, and I am longing for the serenity of the open meadow. 

Other days I'm lost in the darkness thick and black. Searching for a scent I'm howling into the abyss waiting for an echo. The scavenging of owls and other hawkish is all I hear, creatures feeding upon the blindness of the unsuspecting. Serpents spit their tongues, tasting the confusion and opportunism of the provided darkness . A warning growl rumbles past my snarling lips because I know it is in the nature of the snake to be a snake. The night is heavy, pushing my senses to compensate for the lacking sight. I can feel the enemy. I can smell his intentions. I can hear the shifting of each body scale as he raises his copper head from the ground.  I howl a warning loudly out into the deep woods, but the only enemy they can hear is me. 

Yet still other days I've got an ax to grind as I scrape its head against the rock. I'm shouldering through the thicket leaving a slashed set of logs behind me. On those days i've got no time for the wind. On those days i'm a man screaming at the top of my lungs.  Roaring like a bear long awake past his season, Charging through the forest. 

However among many times in my mind I find myself also as a tree . In seasons of growth, and death, Life and shadows and the internalized stillness in the presence of the wind. The rain nurturing my soul. Basking in the light, oblivious to tired cliches or absurd personifications, My sunken roots a little deeper dig into life. And with each year adding another ring of depth and strength I watch with curious pause at the frantic pace of the world around me.