let me take you by the hand and lead you
across the fallen white-skinned log. here where the water curls
and loses itself among the grass
or pools deep and clear beneath me.
this forgotten forest, it has long forgotten ambition – the trees,
which had wanted to pierce a bit of sky for themselves,
have long ago sunk down,
stripped of their jagged bare branches,
turned gentle
among the larkspur blue-violet and the nodding crimson
columbine.

let me lead you and show you where there's a trail,
beaten in mud through lush thickets of labrador tea,
a trail that follows faithfully a stream.
through rusted crumbled puzzles of granite it follows,
through alleyways of gray pines that ensnare it in fractals,
through shimmering mirages of emerald ferns,
forced away but never forgetting so the stream is the first to leave,
to leave - a faraway salted ocean is singing.

follow me as the trail follows the stream.
leave your city of wires and electric imagined lands.

all I ask is that
you let me take you by the hand.