[fragment]
The Gates again open, the skies darken, the rain soaks through stone and skin.
Tip some out to the dead, to The Dead who linger forever just behind your eyes, walking alongside your step through puddles and streams over concrete.
Tip some to the dead and notice you’re not where you were. Everyone’s bumping into you, pushing against you, surprised for a moment you’re there, startled they had gotten so close.
They’re drunk, you tell yourself, but not just on vine and grain.
You weren’t from the forest, and now you are, the dark wet places, rain dripping from leaf, mud and rot slicking the paths beneath your feet, your exposed roots.
What are you doing walking when you can stand still, soak deep into the earth, reach like great pillars towards the sky?
You weren’t from the forest and now you are, the forest that was before, the ghost-trees and spectral ferns, Elk crashing through bramble, startled by a voice still echoing from the past.
You weren’t from the forest but now you will be, awaiting its birth through broken sidewalk and disused alley, hearing it growing through what will soon be your corpse.
You weren’t from the forest, but now you can’t return here. Wet pavement is river, and you wade through it, unseeing the cars unseeing you.
The city’s unreal, the forest gates unhinged, and you walk always along the edge, in both worlds and neither.
You are emissary.
You are saboteur.
You are how the forest becomes the city you’ll betray.
You are unborn dreaming remembering the past.
You are the endless taking root in the now.
Rhyd Wildermuth 