Voices in the Forest

When We are at the Edge of Evening

Boeing Creek Park 17229 3rd Avenue NW Shoreline, WA 98177

Listen in English (SoundCloud)

How quietly the night arrives in the pine forest
when the sky is still light
and the ground, without sun
is bound with half-buried roots

This last light, twilight
Could turn the darkness all the more thick and unknown
Turn the leaves into lace patterns
Turn the heart in on itself, if you let it

And so I sit on this log, long enough,
With eyes open enough
Until I can see
the evening
of nighttime
with darkness
and moon

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Bursting

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)
Listen in Tagalog (read by Hervie Autor; Sound Cloud)

At the edge of open space
the willow trees stands

Her whips loop and fall in tangled lines
yellow, gold, grey
even more flexible than luminous

Her massive limbs
severed by fifty-year snow
Dig into damp earth and arc upward
framing an accidental tree fort

Her moss sleeved branches broken
expose her amber pith
warming with the earth

The willow tree stands
bursting at the edge of open space

Download the bilingual PDF (English and Tagalog)

Tree Fall

Listen in English (SoundCloud)

As I plant each footfall on the forest path, the presence of clouds blunts the sun, and my eyes
sense how every botanical absorbs life: the waxy leaves of madrones, the starry and prickly new
growth of blackberries, and the oh, so, slow and soft moss

And absorbed in my own thoughts, I continue on until I hear myself wonder aloud,
How the man tricked the elders,
Mobilized the angered,
And fueled us all with fear?

And shocked by this seepage, my own turning inside out
I seat myself on you log, and run my palm over your cracked surface, and through the carved
void where once there was wood, and now exists absentness
shaped like a human body

And noting your cleanly severed planes, I wonder, how were you felled?
With help of axe, chainsaw or wind?
Or was it simply the beetles and their collective work?

And as you tipped, did you anticipate how you would land and spend the part of your life that
begins once you have fallen?
Once you have been given over to the undeniable fact of gravity?

And from your place on the ground, once you have fallen,
will you come to see those who landed before you?

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Listening (A Sound Hard to Hear)

North City Park 19201 10th Avenue NE Shoreline, WA 98155

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)

Listen in Tagalog (read by Hervie Autor; Sound Cloud)

I descend the narrow path 
and touch blackberry vines, their prickers bright burgundy 
still soft and so new they are more apt to give way 
than pierce skin
I pull my shirt around me, this is after all, damp cool that finds its own way 
and huddles within the moss covered stones

I pause as the chickadee roots from grounded branch to grounded branch
Glimpse ravens dusting across blades of light
Look up at pine branches, spinning

Close my eyes and listen
to the hard sound of the interstate
Wishing in its place to hear ocean

Download the bilingual PDF (English - Tagalog)

Voices in the Forest