A Poem for LBA Woods, by Jacob Price

My spirit hides with your evergreen nymphs,

my soul is in your blue sighs, where your breath

releases the oxygen I breathe

a cycle of life in our air.

My body moves in your dust.

My footsteps, like the rubber of a stamp,

where you imprinted on me.

How could I forget when the stumps

and fallen trunks became my play things

and the whizzing of crawling creatures

my chorus, my rhythm and my songs

now that I am lost in the openness

of city life?

Leaves that shaded me from formless

nightscapes still

sway while I am away.

And now they threaten

to break your back with their bone machine

to make a skeleton for suburban dreams.

A shelter for thousands of living beings

flee from the sound of mechanical wings.

Where will they land?

The steely bite is worse than the tree’s bark.

Its teeth cuts dead ends in each branch,

from which grew the outline of a leaf.

The metal roar is a language unintelligible

in the sea of swaying peace.

If a tree is felled in a forest,

does the neighborhood hear it?

If the tree is not felled in the forest,

there is a peace

to be heard

ringing, ringing, ringing,

from the woods.

 

Click here to watch a video of Jacob reading his poem.