Recipe for Forgetting
a poem about moving on.
“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
Helpful instructions
can’t be found on my phone.
Mired in accusations,
irrational untruths.
A phone call.
Physicality a notion
now still-born,
withdrawn.
My efforts to breathe
strained and shallow
as a figure appears:
A dredger,
grabber and puller,
gun-wielding shadow.
Not the thing promised,
but the thing changed.
Still a habit of longing
pulls like waves to shore
unraveling over liquid sand-
Just stop it.
Walk in a first forest
where giants’ branches
filter beams of cathedral light
through deep green weavings
to a pungent sheltered floor.
No recipe necessary.
