We do.
We make the forest dark,
a child crying for her mother,
wolves singing of their loneliness,
owls asking their impertinent question.
We imagine a forest, and there it is,
an ocean of trees, the little girl shivering
as another darkness falls, another winter evening.
We make a fire out of moss and sticks
and this casts no light or shadow.
We stumble over ourselves in a dream,
babes in the woods, runaway children,
all kinds of seven darknesses
shading the trail and hushing the fire.
We invent a forest in our image,
a doe made drunk on wilderness,
a bear in the comforts of a growl,
the first stars showing through the branches,
the little girl a character in a storybook,
a tale of the unspoken and unthinkable.
A jagged moon rises in our mind.
Because we say it is so, it is so,
voices in the distance calling a name.
The child asleep, she does not answer.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published
in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner
of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his next book,
'Boxing In The Bone Orchard' is coming out in the Spring of 2025 via Frontenac House.