Forests are where you hear the trees—
a foreign film murmuring.
Undercover life forces tunnel, restructure
the strata of decay, fumbling the wet & bronze & rosewood needles,
nudging & moving down & into
hidden homes.
Some dusks you think you see stained-glass windows
& brackish, inland pools fill the eyes.
Part of the winter forest’s strategy is transparency,
but that makes it feel known.
So the subnivean zone forms—
under-snow rooms, or unconscious zones
in which you feel no hunger
& curl deaf & blind
in apparently meaningless passages.