Lost at last in the pine
forest, deep inside its cool heavy silence,
you have traveled from somewhere to here,
every footfall soft as whispering silk.
No vegetation here: dry discarded needles,
like a sour brown blanket, cover the earth.
Driven from birth toward earth,
from the womb toward the box of pine,
you’re a camel with an eyeful of needles
resigned to find no water here,
burdened by spices and silk
and the desert’s silence.
This silence is like the mind’s silence
after the head is covered with earth
and women in hats and men with silk
ties weep and pine
and say to one another, “Here
lies our loved one. Pray he’ll escape hell’s needles.”
The sound of your feet on dry needles
merges with the silence;
the trees grow tall and close together here.
You lie down on the patient earth,
gaze up at the top of the tallest pine,
cocoon yourself in mind-spun silk,
and dream of a princess dressed in silk
and linen, with acupuncture needles
in her hair, playing solitaire at a knotty pine
table. She looks at you with eyes like silence,
like a view from the moon of Earth;
her eyes for an instant pin your butterfly-soul here.
Then tumbling out of slumber, you crash-land here,
with all the other jumpers who had to hit the silk.
None will survive their encounter with earth.
The connoisseurs of oblivion collect pills and needles
or huddle together in sullen silence
in suburban garages, huffing distilled resin of pine.
And now, pacing a pine floor, you hear
in the silence between creaking boards the rustle of silk;
the memory of needles fills your head like earth.
Matthew Falk lives in Bay City, MI. His work has appeared in Cardinal Sins and The Developing Arts and Music Foundation Monthly.
