When the Forest Speaks First

Just as the world tilts forward, the oak speaks

Its first syllable into a voice I almost know

It wasn’t the usual breath of the world.

But something deeper, rising from below.

The mushrooms are the forest's punctuation,

Each cap a period in earth's endless sentence.

Beetles write their glossy inscriptions

Across leaves that remembers every season.

I have been walking these paths as a stranger,

Naming what I see with borrowed words

"Tree" and "stone" and "stream" pale echoes

Of the thunderous original language.

But now the stonecrop unfolds its green gospel,

Ferns recite their spiral prayers,

And I understand at last why silence

Is the only honest answer to their questions.

O Pilgrim! The creek bends around the bend

Where water learns to speak in liquid fire:

Each ripple a verb, each eddy a noun

In the dialect of becoming.

The soil shifts. Roots reach upward.

I feel my human grammar breaking,

My alphabet dissolving into clay.

The world tilts forward, and the forest speaks.

I open my mouth, taste the rain’s

Feral language on my tongue,

My bones unspooling, softening

Hunger for the fire that lights the world.