Into the woods

For no clear reason, but my own selfishness,

I went to the woods, favouring fake peace

over present noise, the growl of seasons

falling into each other,

incomplete.

Old char-pits, signs of abandoned coppicing,

gun mounts, training trenches, aircraft runways -

slippery sudden footpaths that seemed promising

followed patterns which give nothing away.

Learning nothing, I walked back from the woods;

intimating failed potential, nothing

came from places which thinned out to nothing

more than empty recreation parks.

I went to woods alone and returned frightened,

hollow and aware of chaos,

lonely.

I went to the town, carrying illusion calm,

the hot house and laboratory; made place,

imposing imposing shape on confusion

while unreality bloomed in my face.

I went to the woods, taking the town with me,

booting outwards from my starting kick

to feel what the thinning dying trees might give

cautious experimentation,

risk and folly.

In the woods I saw nothing worth description!

The town was something more like a blinding,

mouth-ear-word machines that need no minding,

observed by eyes, training for transcription.

What was raised up has been erased and scoured

from the soil which had flowered previously.

It is hard enough to find somewhere green,

and fields of it, half-endless, once you know;

some anglophile Indians I met, looking

for village England down small roads, gave up,

and yet, in talk, retained hope; which I felt

and acted on with successful method;

but what we learn we think we always knew,

forgetful how forgetful time makes us

of our weaknesses; and, with my limitations,

I went thorough a woods, and remembered

much which overwhelmed me, with recollections;

so I shut my eyes, to sense more clearly

that unworked poisonous tangle, searching

to find myself returning to the town.

I consumed the woods by writing the words the woods

and thereafter recollecting various tree systems

I had visited; but these mentational activities

had died back before I finished my full first draft.

I never knew Thoreau except that way,

an idea rising out of processed tree,

spirit of poeticised invented place,

voice of a dead speaking without body.

There is a path through the woods, but not woods;

we've chopped it down

clumsy - eros of collision.

gesture - stumble fetish.

bruised and scratching.

ambulation awkward -

start out walking

end up down upon your knee -

kind of worship.

walks with me.

talk to me.

into the woods.

slope of forehead.

out of sun.

within somewhere imagined.

leads and somewhat presages.

[don't give me that

the snapped leaves emitted from machine's progress

bright day	                       seen as

by night	

                                          	words

over heads                      unreachable

but as familiar constellations

break out	                          and it's

revelation	

it is	unspeakably

sign and signifier arbitrate
division of the skull -
uncomprehended power -
penetrated brain into trees
hart pursued seeking solace and sap
and fire and other gem glint among shady trunks

it's possible to read there if you stay
back and back again
rolling down stone-faced
      one the among many but definite articles of 
	         mental furniture growing
knowing
there are words 
for asking
answering words
madness of sanity
if you go down to the woods

today have been down a little chalk scarp
     a broken stile, disrupted discourse between 
                                 field and path
puffing a bit from effort into beechen shade
listening to voices of potent practition
prick-eared between growling king-pins
among them clawed back by undergrowth
  balancing as best as could smashing up the arse 								 
            of a culvert to get out of blackberries								 
 double entry, checking progress, flow of months, 								 
                                   of years, almost
midsummer, not really started
potential / action

and always
the loss,
great loss, continuing

dogged by anxiety
be still! be still!

often beneath water
sometimes in air
ears create voices -

today's endless task will be
to understand

today's endless task will be
to understand