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Voices in the Forest 

Hamlin Park  16006 15th Ave NE Shoreline WA 98155

Nine Prose Poems

Hamlin Park, Main Ball Field [Hamlin #1]
 
Perhaps you’ve come like I have come: delivered your body here among the cedars to allay it, or to seek shades of green when you were consumed by shadow, to seek silence when your life was clamor, to remain still for the gratitude of unshorn grass while you imagine a game at this field—whether you’re player or spectator, imagine the exhilaration of getting a hit, the chorus of cheers, the thrill of running the stark white bases like beacons, and gazing upon the scoreboard that marks your victory. Imagine teammates, the common goal, imagine who’s in the bleachers to offer their arms, imagine that body holding you up, as stalwart as one of these Hamlin cedars. 
 
 Listen in English (Sound Cloud)

Hamlin Park, Patrick R. Duff Memorial [Hamlin #3]
 
You will die and I’m sorry. Most any moment can be life-affirming, though—seeing the distinct way the sun streams down onto this Hamlin path, and how when a gust of wind dislodges the conifers’ needles, they descend as a mist descends before a rainstorm. You have come here, to this log bench where a man’s life ended. The limb of a healthy white pine snapped off, though the arborists said the tree presented no “particular problems.” You’re experiencing what he experienced: your eyes consuming sumptuous green and Shoreline air cool in your lungs. Despite the hand of his spouse, despite nature burgeoning around him, and their dog tugging at the leash, he passed. “His life goes on in our stories,” the plaque reads. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)
 
Hamlin Park, Path Up [Hamlin #2]
 
I want to write the poem that will save your life, but I do not know your plight, or whether or not its words or no words that you need. I watched a red-headed woodpecker pecking the bole of an evergreen. Her aim was beneath the surface, for the insects and seeds hidden within the crevices. Woodpeckers are the poets of the forest. If you’re here in spring, did you notice the new-green color of new growth of the leaves? In these woods, in every fallen tree which may become nurse, in every living shrub, scotch-broom, ivy, fern, in every shadow that undulates about the forest floor as I stroll these trails in which I abandon direction and purpose, my sanctuary exists. I wish to celebrate my rootlessness in the breeze that shutters the branches around me and which flutters my journal’s pages (which still are tiny trees), to write my place in this world in all its frailties, and to think of you and the poem that you might need for saving. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)

Hamlin Park, Upper Ball Field [Hamlin #4]
 
When it’s spring but the ball field hasn’t seen a game in weeks, you can walk onto the adjacent field and sit among the thousands of buttercups that punctuate yellow the green of unshorn grass. What would compel a person to inspect a buttercup, to see into the whorl and how the sepals cradle the petals, and depending on the angle of sunlight, how shadows are formed? You could write this poem, but you must first get down in it, at grass level, to experience the buttercup for its stem, stamens, and carpels. Have you seen a purer yellow? What’s your taste for butter? There’s uniformity in leaves of grass and petals of flower; but there’s uniqueness in each one. When’s the last time you sat among the wildflowers? There’s still so much more to learn. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)
 
Hamlin Park, Eastside Access [Hamlin #5]
 
Don’t be afraid. You can change your life. It starts in these woods. Who have you brought? Being alone is second best to a dog companion. For, dogs will beg you to linger when you had intended to stroll on. They’ll pull you in a direction you had not sought; they might halt for a robin or squirrel; and they might alert you to the osprey that nests atop a light fixture in the upper ball field. All paths are right and all paths are wrong in their own way. There is no confusion among the trees. Notice how certain moments during your walk bring only filtered sun and some moments your body can bathe in light. Praise the body that delivered you here—it’s safe; you can make a change. It can be small. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)

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

 
North City Park, Westside [North City #2]
 
I have been here before you, thinking about what I’d say, as if this were some message in a bottle. Henry David Thoreau, I, too, have great faith in a seed. Perhaps that’s what this poem is, a seedling of hope that you’ve found refuge here. Have the salmonberries ripened yet? Do you see madrona, pine, fir, sequoia trees? Close your eyes and touch one’s trunk, its bark—thick, protecting, permeable, living. Moss, lichen, fungi, and a root system we can only imagine. The world opens to us only as much as we have the ability to receive. You and I have come to these exact coördinates. I might never meet you, but I will revere you as someone else for whom this space offered respite. It’s a gift—us knowing and not knowing: one place, separate moments. 
 

Listen in English  (Sound Cloud)

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

Download the bilingual Tagalog-English PDF

North City Park, Path Boulders [North City #1]
 
How lovely, this plot of land on which someone created a paved way, set aside boulders through which we can stroll or sit if we wish, to be alone with our thoughts or no thought. To feel anointed or empty. To be lonely but not alone, for among us are birds in nests, squirrels in dreys, the fern, ivy, holly. When we’re solemn, we can venture to the woods, feel inconsequential, as if we ourselves are no miracle at all. But hearing the sparrow’s song reminds us that each note is purposeful. Today I’ve come to the smell of pine and damp earth after rain, to the breeze on my face, and the cool boulder under my lap. Kindness begins with self. Love this moment—it’s enough. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)
 

Paramount Open Space, Willows in Meadow [PoS #1]
 
Why have you come? To marvel at the delicate daisies adorning the lush meadow before the willows? Never once have I visited the woods and wished to be elsewhere—not ocean, not desert, not city, not even at someone’s side. It’s here that I wish to be: Variegation, varietals of green, a small waterway (call it creek, stream, brook, call it any type of tributary), a thick patch of clover, the maples, aspens, birch trees. The way this space completes my body is the reason that I’ve come. When I was a child I wouldn’t step on grass because I thought I would hurt it. Then I got older and abandoned those naïve notions. Then I got even older and realized I was correct before, a child who knows more than she knows. It’s in these woods where the answers lie. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)

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

Download the bilingual PDF, English / Tagalog, translated by Language Link
 
Paramount Open Space, Tractor Overgrown [PoS #2]
 
Here’s a type of mirror—what do you see? Everything is in flux, even this old tractor. Its transmission, engine, steering column are still recognizable. And the seeds that took root and the saplings that grew and the cedars that seek sunlight and nutrients, they’re all thriving, despite the metal frame, the tires, the bucket. Mirrors only function when there’s something to reflect; it’s a two-part system. Here, a tractor that no longer tracts, and nature that persists despite the metal impediments. When have you been the static tractor, intractable? When have you been nature, malleable? Some days the mirror might show you you’re the engine; some days it reflects that you’re the robin’s nest. 

Listen in English (Sound Cloud)

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

Download the English-Tagalog PDF

Download the PDF of all 9 prose poems