20. Eating Bark

in the Adirondacks | we have mayapples

and blue-eyed grass | partridgeberry and

hemlock beyond hemlock | the water stays cold

all year | the loons warble

in their neat silhouettes | and that call

crawls up the spine | we can feel

them singing | go deep

enough into the woods | and if

there is rain of summer | falling

the forest floor | becomes orange

with salamander | who accept life

above ground | if the rain falls

on them good | and hard

at first | we could not

understand the gulls | hundreds of miles

from an ocean | so we learned

gulls are | water birds

not seabirds | we don’t know

what they eat | and we accept

their unexpectedness | among us

six million acres | so we cannot see

it all | but hike a few miles

into hemlock | from a road

and you might sleep | at night

around the screaming of | ravens

their voices maniacal | sound

like the cry of | a person

being gutted alive | it takes

time to understand that | then

more to sit | in oily darkness

while the screaming | continues

as we learn how | to walk

in the woods | we learn

how to understand | their voices

the woods are so much | hemlock

and birch | that you miss sight

of others | we look for places

we have been | so we can find

the newts resting | in a pond

atop a hill | it seems right

we rarely see beavers | but

their toothwork | they leave

for us | saw a pair of adolescents

carousing in shallow water

but they ran | upon sight

of my sight of them | have

never seen | a marten

have heard | bears tear

down an ill | assembled

campsite | one night

but have seen enough

piles of used | berries to know

they were near | often enough

and those woods | they

are peaceful | and dangerous

I try to recall | every edible

plant | in case we need them

have eaten them | to prepare

because we don’t know | if

we’ll need the woods | to survive