TRAILS OF SAWDUST

Large pines lie crisscrossed,

Decayed wood bare of bark

Softens and turns darker

Than ground moss or the leaf bed.

Tall statures no longer fed, but feeding,

Branched crowns broken and scattered,

Roots relieved of towering weights,

Feet that had never stumbled left

Trails of sawdust as drought spread

Across the calendar and the aerial maps.

Clustered, the fallen lie without canopy or shadow,

A sun baked forest floor teems

With unseen and negative powers of ten that

Spiral down into the dead wood,

As a stray buck and doe break out of a stand

Of unfallen trees and stop, freeze-framed,

Eyes wide open and nostrils flared,

Hooves planted on parched earth,

They wait at the edge of a wooden bone yard

And then step carefully towards

A path where dense shadows crouch.

© cmheuer, 2013