Gardening The Forest:  A Work In Progress


I garden the forest.

Walking everywhere – like Johnny Appleseed –

I keep my excellent Swedish clippers at my side,

And when I eye a roadside tree

With branch too low, so’s I can see,

I make the lower branches go,

Prune and clear selectively,

Clip high as I can reach,

Which,

Being five foot one

And using muscle of the female kind,

Is always kind to undergrowth,

Seduced by ‘further’,

Blazing paths that never were,

So light can filter through.

It wants for sun. It makes for light.

The woods and I are one;

But I can’t tell a soul.

Wandering on until de-celeration

Starts to take me over,

Signs I’ve learned to recognize

When fervor starts to waver

And observer me says “Rest!”


Works in progress never cease.

It is a forest,

After all.

Work In Progress: Gardening The Forest 11.28.2006 revised 1.18.2014/again 4.20.2015

Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Nature II: