I enter the woods of my childhood days
Green leaves form a canopy above me and blot the sky
Saplings and ferns spring from the ground
and critters scatter into the undergrowth as I pass by

The farther in I travel, the darker it gets
The mingling leaves smother the light
a deer glances my way
its eyes drooping and no longer bright
Its cadaverous form limps away
Hidden by the mortifying flowers from my sight

The forest I had known turns grey with fog
the plants die with a gasp of breath
The trees holding up the sky
stand crooked, rotting like the rest
While all the critters disappeared
until their corpses line my path

Reluctantly, I continue along this sadly familiar path
until I stumble upon a clearing where in the center is a tree
Mushrooms mark as stepping stones and surround the base
of its massive trunk and branches suspended between
the balance of life and death, neither dead nor alive.
The infamous tree of withering
And from its boughs hangs a woven noose
in its loop a human . . .
                                                     . . . me.