The woods of my mind are mingled pine
and birch, with far-up sunlight broken
and reassembled, into a mosaic:
Blue sky and sparkling coin-shaped leaves.
I can walk among the trunks
In a ballerina dress
And the magical tulle never snags.
There is birdsong:
But the birds are in the distant canopy
Messengers of another sphere.
I don't know their names.
The woods in my neighbourhood
Are a ten-minute walk away.
Maybe less, when I almost run
To keep up with the girls on their bikes.
The trees are three scattered bushes.
There is a parking lot
Where the children yell into the bosom of the wind
And ride in circles.
I sit on a bench, an empty
School building at my back
A flat, mowed field at my front, green
Thanks to the frequent summer rains.
My daughter careens past, vanishes around the brick wall,
The stillness closing behind her. Then reappears, walking.
I saw a tarantula: it was right here, she says.
I watch the mounds of weeds pushing up through pavement.
Will one of them crawl toward my foot?
The best evidence of time
Are the sprinklers that erupt
Row by row for five minutes, then vanish
Amusing, ice-cold geysers.
They splash wrists and ankles
The bikes and search for tarantulas briefly abandoned.
Otherwise,
It might be another summer
A lake like an oily mirror,
A wooden dock at its edge, the small splinters working into my bare feet.
I leap off it again and again
The thunder of my own splash echoing in my inner ear.
Above me, the mirror shatters to reassemble
Into a mosaic of liquid diamonds.
Each time, I push my body deeper
How many ways are there to be underwater?
A dancer in magical tulle
Rehearsing, weightless
In an empty studio.
You don't need music in this kind of silence.
In a few weeks, people will ask me casually:
How was your summer?
I went into the woods of my mind, and I found them
Nearer than I remembered.
(c) October 2025 Síochána Arandomhan
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