Ill Nurtured Nature
They left me in the woods…a simple game of hide-and-seek, only there was no reciprocation. I’ve been here for so long, the imprints my knees have made are now pools of mud from the rainstorm that swept through a little bit ago. My shirt has been reduced to torn fabric after an encounter with a patch of thorn bushes. My left shoe is missing, off flirting with some quagmire a mile or so back. There’s no ethnicity in the woods like there is where I’m from. The blood from cuts and dried, caked mud has become my ethnicity; skin purpled from the cold night air.
But I’m beginning to forgive my so-called friends for abandoning me. I’ve made new friends; the hole-filled tree leaves, those holes in the shape of abstruse faces, making no remarks and passing no judgment. Ready to superimpose any characteristic I wish to attach to them.
How the traffic lights from the cluttered suburban streets I’m used to, pale in comparison to the stars lighting the night sky. Constellations replacing television as entertainment for me. There’s a marriage between my breaths, which dance in short, scratchy form, and the thoughts of contentment, which parade through my brain. No exact thoughts, mind you, more like Zen. An absence of any real material, thoughts about thought, about absolutely nothing and everything.
One would expect me to grow hungry, but only, I do not hunger. I am not confined to one corporeal existence. I am many, a shared experience. The reason I am not sought is because no one knew to find me. They left, exchanging awe and wonder and humility, for safety, lies, and unnatural construction. Both physical and immaterial. I am forfeiture. The “Let’s leave it behind, it isn’t worth it, we can always get another.”
But they don’t understand. They can’t. True, I am always waiting…willing to accept with open arms and forgiveness, but they don’t seem to make any concession, instead, they want to make this thing called progress. Towers stand and sidewalks sleep in my earthen bed in place of me. Becoming a mistress to the soil and minerals. What hurts most is that the material these new obstructions are made from comes from me and the rest of nature. As if we weren’t good enough as we were. We wait patiently, trying to understand how to get you back. You live in your towns, with your possessions, for that’s where they live. Living a very narrow existence in them, and having the gall to call it experience. We keep your shared experiences and discarded goods in our belly, in hopes of luring you back, just wishing to experience real experience with you again.
Copyright © Joseph Szalinski | Year Posted 2022
|