Whisper when appropriate, it's good for small ears

I think I need a break from the city. I enjoy it, but I just need a bit of a break. Camping has always been a great remedy for these periodic feelings of confinement, detachment, and general repulsion of modern society. Needless to say, nature has been on my mind lately along with a handful of other things. I will process/write about those other things soon, but here are some words in a silly attempt to make nature feel a little less distant. 


You have a map of the forest on your palms

the cut-outs and short-cuts mapped out with every scar

you know where the waters rise and the land sinks 

all branded into your skin

you have a map of the forest on your palms 

it all fits perfectly between your fingers

great spans and hallowed canyons  

pressed into every crack knuckled crevice  

figure eight valleys circle sun-worn fingers

with hundreds of years of oral histories

spoken into your skin cells

you have a map of the forest on your palms

the place you lived and tilled, toiled and sowed 

old hymnal stories, great lessons told 

where there is a sermon everywhere you look

never spoken but always heard

she speaks with eyes quiet and lips cold

same stories of bygone days

preceding the roads that
separated her from her children

and I am but a curious visitor.

                                              

'Be still and know where you are
only you forget when you 
are afraid of being lost'
whispered in both ears
as the greatest thief of all
found its rest beyond the horizon
leaving my hands filled with 
dark shadows of drunken dusk aftertaste