It was 1996
and God watched from the trees
grown over with the moss
that crept like a slow plague.
The jacket of pink neon hugged my shoulders
in the autumn
as I pounced from tree to tree
in search of fabled Dutch gnomes,
living inside the uprooted extremities
of the age-old mammoths that towered above.
And had I known,
had I the might of brain power it required
my search may have been short-lived
and less disappointing
than the day I discovered,
oh, woe is me,
those hideous gnomes
were words from my father’s mouth
and nothing more.
Not tangible.
Not probable.
Not even anatomically correct, necessarily,
and their homes were definitely not
in the gnarled vacancies of the trees.
It is 2009
and there is a void
that echoes noiselessly through the forest,
emanating from the laborious creak of the hunchbacked tree.
My hand clutches the lens of the camera hanging from my neck
and occasionally
I halt my stroll
to capture a photo of the holes.
Today I laugh at the prospect of gnomes
and all other things invisible to the eye, for that matter
but I believe
in cameras and leaves and squirrels and trees
and I believe
in voids and holes and gaps
and all those surrounded bits of emptiness
and when I tire from my long walk across narrow paths
I settle into a hole like a cradle
and close my eyes for a brief slumber. |
Submission Name: to fill a void
