The Ghost In The Forest

Things are much more predictable
indoors.  Read a book and chuckle
to yourself.  Television on, everything else
off.  You’ll be happy in a limited way.

Outdoors, there are bugs
and wind and such.  My father
used to talk about “the ghost in the forest”
which was his name for two limbs
rubbing together and calling out
in a clear squeak, for instance.  Read
or write a book
and slap away mosquitoes, there’s no TV,
no radio, and if you bring a flute
or guitar or something with you
sap may fall on it and you’ll scurry
back to the house to clean it off.

It’s not easy to believe in a spirit out there
asking for your attention, or rather
not asking, simply taking it, or perhaps
it’s doing neither, simply speaking
because it can speak.  How contemptuous
it must be of our rich inner lives,
or perhaps it feels nothing at all for us,
notices us not at all, which is worse.

Some years ago I stopped to put out a brush fire
near a state park folks around here call Purgatory.
Someone had likely tossed a cigarette out of a car window
and the banks along the road were red and rolling
so I pulled a blanket from my trunk to snuff it,
but it wouldn’t stay snuffed.

The grass burned and
the fire hissed and snapped alive at the edges
and reignited when I wasn’t looking, or even when I was,
and the grass could have cared less about ideas like “motive,”
or “carelessness,” or “heroic action.”  It just burned,
curling and crisping and vanishing into black threads
of itself as the flames passed.  The oak leaves
curled up and toasted brown above the fire.
I came home and thought about nothing else
for a few hours, then settled back into my chair
and wrote about it all.  It’s fair to say
the grass grew back regardless of my writing,
though I’m sure “fair” is another word
the ghost in the forest
wouldn’t recognize.

I will go back to that place
and see if there’s a trace of any of this having happened,
now that I’ve written of it again from the safety
of the living room,
see if it made a difference, see if
I should bother to keep writing.