Forests

There are places in the city that
make me think of home-
The back woods of New England,
the winding, curving, tree-shrouded roads
ancient stone walls that wound steadily
at my side while I drove
like the rails of a crib.

When the snow would come
and blanket our sprawling campus,
we went out like children into the
chunky, lumpy mashed potato play land.
We were stolen blissfully, momentarily
from our careers and looming futures,
our statistical failures and our stacking debt.

And when spring poked through the
frozen earth and the snow dissolved to green,
we would make a game out of avoiding the potholes
snow’s bite had carved out of the tar.
Like us, nature would not be told
how to behave.

I remember my hand sailing on the wind streams
outside the car window
as I drove further into the woods,
an emerald fantasy the faeries
refused to relinquish to us.

The roads grew narrow and turbulent
from years of neglect and overgrowth.
The more I drove,
the closer to I felt to home, to heart.

And now in this city
each day is a performance,
an untamable forest all its own.

 

more by NOELLE CURRIE

Photograph by Ali Inay