The Forest of Depression

The field is soft and green
With wildflowers dotting
The elephantine slopes
With vibrant colors
Of blue and yellow
While the sun dances
Across the meadow in strong
Salsa beats that reverberate
Against the sparse copses
And mounds of the gentle world.

The bushy trees hide jay’s nests
And squirrel holes and the rabbits
Fly from warren to warren
Delivering the news and being social.
The birds talk to the sky
As the light slows it’s beat
To warm the deep pond
Where bass and bream
Play in the stony brook
Across the far field.
All here is real and corporeal,
Warm and assuring
As life marches on.

The forest though,
At the fields edge,
Phantasmagoric and dark,
Holds no light, but lies dead and dank
Where no god will go.
It’s ancient trees are as old
As time, and they slink and snake
Their way across the moss
Filled ground but die
As they move towards the center,
Dare not entering the heart.
There are rats here,
And wolves, but they
Too will not enter.

The forests dark center,
That allows no light
During night or day,
Darkness is visible
And shadowy, ethereal
And unreal. Silhouetted
Shapes glide effortlessly
About unbidden and unwanted
But driven though by an unnatural
Urge to glimmer amongst the ebony
Curtain of gloom.

Here, in a small gathering of dirt
Clogged ground lays the sleeper,
Haunted by nightmare rhythms,
Projected by the wraithlike trees
And pallid owls, dirty and death
Covered and hooting unnaturally
All night in turn until they die
And are replaced by the same un-holy
Danse- macabre, like an evil phoenix
Rising from the grave,
But still dead.

The sleeper lay still
Moves not a muscle
Stirs not a twinge,
Corpse like and silent,
Dead like and grounded
To the same damnable
Spot night after night
And day after day
In a land so dreadful
That no light enters
And no god dares
Disturb the ghastly
Graveyard center.

The roots grow deep
Here, so deep
That no one knows how deep
They go. Fire tamed
Are these roots that bind
And hold the sleeper
And poppies hug the ground,
Dead and diseased, blowing
Soft kisses that etherize
His body while distressing
His soul.

This is why he lay
In somnolent nightmare
Repose, night after night
And day after day
In a land so dreadful
That no living thing dares
Disturb the nightmare
Forest dark.

But life goes on outside
The forest in the blissful
Meadow that smiles
On its denizens
As life-nurturing sunlight
Feeds the swift rabbits
And wily squirrels
And winds carry the birds
To kiss the sun and flutter
About the moon.

But in the forest, still, no God will go.