A girl runs to fabled woods aiming
to sing a forest of songs.

Dreaming of applause, she takes up
residence on a woodpile.

For her it’s cheap to repeat verses
from popular chorus lines.

She demands potential, expansion
and radical improvisations.

What happens is that improbable
verses pop up out of the blue.

Secretly she imagines that others
Might like to join in, but who?

Looking straight ahead, she has no
intention of singing a ballad.

She sings oblique medleys that lack
any detectable connotations.

For her, ambiguity and wonder
should sit high on the horizon.

She has never tested sung surprises
on a new audience before.

Her refrains anticipate harmony,
but her voice flies far from it.

Had an audience been present
they’d have labelled it tuneless.  

She looks around for kinship and
emotion without keeping time.

She is oblivious to her vanishing
chords and musical silences.

Symphonies resound inside her
head, but her voice is silent.

It doesn’t germinate songs as the
chest of another singer would do.

She bonds with rhythms, oblivious
to the merits of transmission.  

They rang out once before when she
had fasted from speech for refuge.

The songs she dreams of are subtle,
Personal, ambiguous and obscure.

She can’t even imagine singing
them to the people she’s closest to.

She sings to the trees about things
It’s just not possible to say.

Her unobtrusive sounds fall far
short of anyone who has ears.

In the silence of recovery, she
hears solitude residing inside.

This is a deep place where tongues
fail because intention succeeds.

Her sounds express nuanced truths
that the trees alone understand.

The forest bathes in this sonorous
invitation echoing beyond the bark.

The leaves applaud, they wave,
flicker and join with the singing.

It’s rare for woodpiles to pulse
with song or breathe with breath.