“I sometimes think I don’t belong here/in this wood–that the tree’s knots/are frowns grown for me, or the leaf crunch/is a worm cracking a crass joke at my expense.”
Back in these woods feels like
anywhere but Tallahassee.
It starts with cypress vines,
a ravine, a puttering brook,
and a trail that looms
before washing into a glade of ferns.
An aquifer’s hatch lies close at hand
and water sneaks into the bog
–ooze quickening to sludge to mud.
In crevices like split logs
are two bones bleached
and jutting out of the canyon wall
like the rungs of an unfinished ladder.
One bone protruded, rounded at the end,
while the other bent in
like trees the day after an ice storm.
Ridges veined the bone
which I could almost realize
—or maybe it was dirt.
They looked like stones
graffitied white,
but in the creek’s molassassing,
silt sticks.
I stepped down to cross the crevice
and brook rushing from me.
Grasping a vine, I went to step on a stone
and then cross to the other side,
yet this was a trap lay for me,
Whether by the brook or the frogs
I know not. But a shaped clod of mud
sunk under my weight,
and for a moment only my cry
could be heard on the Butter Mill Trail.
I sometimes think I don’t belong here
in this wood–that the tree’s knots
are frowns grown for me, or the leaf crunch
is a worm cracking a crass joke at my expense.
The wire fence by the entrance
is barren, and I missed it the first
ten times I walked here.
So I’ll stop here, and just look.
Across is a hill,
where the trail falls away
now covered in sweet gums
and mokernut hickory and magnolias,
after that, I assume rabbits and deer
sit down for coffee and talk weather,
which is enough for me.
Samuel Schaefer is a poet and journalist in Tallahassee, Florida and has previously published poetry at Voeglin View and The Tower Light. He also posts on Substack.
