How rare when I lived in the woods
to stand at a window. Instead,
I went out into the stillness
that’s anything but still.
Each morning on the path
I kept raked all year, I walked
through pin oaks and pines,
steadfast junipers, the occasional
wild dogwood and aromatic
sassafras. So much to learn
in those woods without using
my mind. Without language
as ladder up or rope down,
I breathed with my body
instead of letting my brain
take all the oxygen. I tried
to let the trees watch me.
Tried to let language fall away,
dismissed word after word
as if to mimic the trees.
As if I too were a tree doing
what I must. As if each thought
were green with chlorophyll,
and I could hold on to it
only by letting go, each word
a leaf that first yellowed, then
dropped onto the path
until the woods became
part of me, the words then
underfoot and bright
before they darkened.
ANDREA HOLLANDER’S sixth full-length poetry collection, And Now, Nowhere But Here, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books. Read more.