The Living Dark
Don Hynes
and back to the black hole
of forest slicing down to the ocean;
Other than dogs and people, we hadn’t seen a set of tracks so clearly marked. I didn’t understand why the elk had come down to the sea, although a fresh water creek met the ocean nearby, or perhaps it was for the salt, but what captivated me was the return path and the darkened entry to the great forest that reached down to this shoreline on the flanks of the coastal mountains.
beyond the spoil of illumination
waited a living dark
where boughs grew down
to a matted under-story
of water sound and insect
a fertile darkness
pulsing with imagination
In my poetic vision here was an entry, a portal to the world of nature, the Earth Herself, so close yet driven so distant in our industrial age. The strangeness of our human separation from our Giver of Life was never more apparent or sad.