The Ordinary Times

mount hood.

A Clearing in the Woods

by Thomas P. Lynch

You have come into a clearing in the woods

and want to live your life out, here, alone,

joyous and remote among the catbirds

 

letting the light fall on you and the shade

in hourly changing angles as a grace

endlessly descending among tree limbs

 

while growing in you is the will to grow

mindless of the niggling everyday

profusion of detail by which you know

 

uselessly the names and dates and shape of things.

After a while, you will begin to sing.

Harmless and plentiful you make the sounds.

 

Bent on nothing that does not bend with ease

you and your song rise in the leafy air

chancy as bass spawn in a mallard’s underwings.