— After visiting the Yaak Valley in Kootenai National Forest, Montana, where the U.S. Forest Service announced a logging project named Black Ram
What can we do now, but resist
against abandonment, becoming an echoing sound
in the midst of the intricate green, becoming a crossed-
out word on someone’s hand.
Once, all of this became
all of this. An immature golden western larch
curves by a white pine, a white pine
curves by a western hemlock, no hero to be found
here. To enter here is to step into
greatness, to experience a euphoric sense
of being, a void of your own identity.
All words lose their meaning. A whole world exists
without us. But who are we?
Lichen, moss, grizzly scat, moose hoofprints like two
exclamation points by the drying frog pond.
How do you know you’re alive? What proof
will you leave behind? So many legends
are unraveling; a yellow swallowtail gracefully glides
over the sinless creek bed. A storm
wets the skin and we are astonished that
we have skin. Woods’ rose, white-flowered rhododendron,
nothing here lacks completion. What did it give me? I witnessed
a new tree emerging from a ground composed of ancient trees
on top of even older trees,
on top of yet more ancient trees, and then I realized
that this is how the Earth was formed.
This poem is featured in the October 2023 print edition.
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