Issue 2:2 | Featured Artist | Thomas Rain Crowe

WHAT THE FORESTS WERE

ARE NOW THE AIR WE NO LONGER BREATHE

Thomas Rain Crowe

Are stitch in the throat.

Thoughts of logged land

laughing at how nothing has

been made of something

more beautiful than birth or

the quiet absence of trees --

When will the wind exhale the excrement

of ignorance, and

the sapling soar

into canopy of cathedralic bliss?

This

movement no longer struggling with stain

or

the effigy of the almost in

the lack of time.

Power the bar that would be builder

of everglades, evergreen, ever-blooming

in the eyes of us all as

we wander into the lust of the woods.

Woods wilder than what was

even made by God.

Good riddance

to what is missing in a kiss.

What flows over rock like satin

but less sweet than

a spring meal of morels

melting like December snow

in the mouth of ferns.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

2002