In the forest
Near
the
forest in a field
staring wide-eyed still
soundlessly
deer, sshhh.
I stand next to the river.
The water is a window. I can
see the fish
all the way to the
bottom of any of the streams
that run off down into
the hills. Throughout the
summer growing season
the Ginkgo, Oak, Elm, Spruce
and Cedar -- Chestnuts and
Persimmon start to spread. And the
strange Sycamore trees.
Needles and leaves are scattered
upon the ground thick as a
carpet.
There is the heavy smell of pine gum.
The pine trees themselves touch
across the forest floor with a
turpentine,
fish bone, spiny-cone, clove-smelling
paint brush hand.
A green paint brush for a hand.
In the winter, the snow is
cut sharply by thirsty ice on
a knife-like bank. The edge of the
river slices against
my bare raw exposed ankles
trembling, moving quickly
in the cold running
pebble-bottomed brook.
Can’t forget to wear your
socks in the winter.
Like, I always try to get away
with it anyway. Better
than getting my socks
wet when I break
the ice with my feet like
I usually do. The cold
feels good though.
At least, at first, until I
get home into the warmth
and then my toes start to
sting. Better luck next
time. Next time the crack
from the crashing ice
won’t send the deer
running for the next county.
Near the forest in a field
staring wide-eyed, large
eared, white-tailed, the
color of wood and dry grass,
inside the sounds, underneath
the sounds I make with
my wide-track feet are
the deer again, sshhh. A bird
I hadn’t heard before
sings under the whisper of a
deer’s breath. Sounds a lot
closer than I thought.
I turn slowly and back down
in my mind, you know. Deer
can kick. They aren’t really
that small when you are
practically standing right
next to them.
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Poems
It is towards evening
It is towards evening
when I finally realize
that the day is like the
evergreen: dark and light
growth in its fullness.
The final cool end of the day
comes high on top of the trees,
as if the heating and cooling
of the earth is threatening the broad
starry sky to not
reappear past the darkening clouds,
as the light through
the woods flickers out like a match.
Never mind,
even though they say that the stars
are not permanent, but have been
burning relentlessly for billions
of years and, just now (and when
we can see their
light in the rising darkness
of the sky far away),
they, of course, burn again
underneath a wash of clouds
over the continuous sound of
the ocean --
all night long
until the morning
and on towards evening again --
when the dark evergreen
in its fullness reaches
for the coolness
in the deeper tides
of indigo.
​
Unspun wool
After the rain
I wandered
from hill to
hill there was
no one there.
Every flower was
fresh, strong and
milky, as if the stems
were drinking from the moist
green earth.
The grass sprang up
behind my footsteps
undamaged by the
slight pressure of
my passage. I walked
until I could see
nothing but the cloudy,
stretching, bathed,
naked and blue
sky.
The clouds had
wrung themselves
dry
of moisture
and were
gathered
together into
silky spools as if they
had just been spun
on a spinning
wheel.
The stretching azure
was vast and empty
except
for some sparsely scattered
unspun bunches of vapor --
soon being wheeled
across the wild air
into thin, wispy
thread.
Every little grain of sand
​
Every little grain
of sand on the dunes seemed as if it
had been counted by me in passing --
so many times over -- that I can almost see time move
with the water, deeply underneath
the vast floor of the sea,
as if the ocean
was holding the seconds and the minutes
like an hourglass.
More than any other element
or mineral, the sea seems to
embrace the slow moving body
of the earth (how it moves, why it moves)
more slowly,
more tightly,
than even the stars and planets.
We might be carried along with the stars
like passengers in a donkey cart,
not believing in astrology, all waggling
our heads in one big no -- but
getting to our destinations within
some notion of Orion, Leo,
Libra or Taurus.
But it always seems as if time moves --
only then,
only when the
ocean itself
moves.
Biography
Cathy Smith has been seeing things poetically since birth: the sunlight over her crib, the curtains in the breeze. She has lived in many beautiful places such as the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, the seacoast of the Alaskan islands, the forests of Maine, the beaches of southern California and North Carolina. She also visited places such as the Everglades, the bayous of Louisiana, Mark Twain National Forest, Teddy Roosevelt National Forest and the Chiricahua mountains and sand dunes of Arizona. All of these places have a home in her poetry. She now resides in northern Maine snuggled up to the Canadian border, nearest Canandian town is ten minutes up the road.
To be continued...Cat