Inside A Wood

Inside a wood I feel alive I am attached to trees In Dante's forest of Suicides The damned have become the oak, the elm, the ash I can think of worse fates Than to inhabit a tree There, you can sit in the shadow of an owl Look at the satin leaves above, Rustling, sylvan, silken Watching the thin ribbed hulls Of tiny birds, sailing from branch to branch Sometimes I walk the coffin road To sit in the lovely silence of my forebears Enter the peace of the dead Inside a wood I feel alive We are linked by the green blood Ofthe earth and its many creatures