PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

"where none have trod before"

Do not enter only with an axe.

Walk first beneath the boughs,
where the leaves rehearse forgotten winds
and the birds have named each branch
without a single word.

Stand there long enough
for the forest to become
less a place
than a way of seeing.

Then, if you must,
fell the tree.

Count its rings.
Read the grain.
Split the timber
until its hidden years
lie open in your hands.

Build what you can
from what it has given.

But when your work is done,
do not mistake the harvest
for the ending.

Look to the clearing.

There,
where light now reaches earth,
a scatter of waiting seeds
have already begun
their quiet ascent.

For every poem worth understanding
should leave behind
not merely lumber,
but a forest
no one has walked before.

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