
Ecotone
By David Crews
[player id=13143]
It’s such a wilderness
It surrounds us
she says
go through it, pull yourself to the center
open your heart to what the mind remembers
which too is a forgetting
Don’t you feel it
begin outside the body
once a voice
that speaks the language of all things
touched, caressed
held too close
that yearns for the words of a thousand mysteries
small hurts that come from loss
(she touches her arm)
how to live in such bewilderment?
~
There is a place I go to remember
when I forget there are
and have been
good souls who love me
It is simple really, she says
you give when you have and when you get
you get too much
May I touch
the lamb’s ear?
Is it true
hummingbirds come to the beebalm?
Will the honeybees
return? (It hurts to love
this hard) I have a tired heart
~
How far back must I travel
to see him
to hold him with my arms and say
what right do you have to my body?
I sense the loss
of all things—sunlight in grass
tiny bees that once I did not know were bees
gentle pollinators
giving, getting—
how the little birds would sing
and the other ones
scratching through undergrowth
~
How far back must I go
to love my body? When the memory
of stone still speaks
Once, they called it the backlands
a hinterland of wilderness—
I have a body
she says
and no voice, the wilderness a voice
and no body
Is there no way to save it?
All streams flow
to the sea
how far back must I go
to love another’s body?
~
There is a loneliness, she says
and it leaves little room
to remember
Count me–
among the animals, their small committed
I heard
souls
Calls, she says
(puts a hand to her face)
The forest receives exiles
solo natives
some call it the healing woods
too much longing
for a body to contain
I want to shatter every reflection I see
want my body to be free
of its weight, in water
I forgive you
you are loved
~
Void, voice, violence
solace in everything but the body
I want to ask for a departure
lone trek to the edge of things—
deep conifer forest
ground soft and cold, needles
tossed by prints of mustelids, foxes
the burrowings of sparrows
crisp fresh breath, air
and lung, quiet release
Here, I forget
In a dream
I see endless forest—
dark, damp
a far field at center
water dammed and slowed near the source
(The woods
were once filled with them)
~
I must believe
a voice outlives the body—
no sound, buzz
(she looks into the tree)
To love
she says
comes from the body
you give yourself first
you may not believe it
To hurt
in tenderness
love to violence I’m sorry
you will never inhabit my body
so love it
as it were your own
~
It is such a wilderness
this body
the body is a wilderness
bewilderment of the body
what is wild
in its being—to bewilder, to be
wild, willing
vulnerable to element
I cannot bring you safety
but believe
I will never cause you harm
It is such a wilderness, they say
italicized lines from Jennifer S. Cheng, Lao Tzu, and Jane Mead
for INTONATION, a project with ARTS By The People (2020)

Night Sky © David Crews
Featured image © David Crews
___________________
David Crews is author of Wander-Thrush: Lyric Essays of the Adirondacks (Ra Press, 2018) and High Peaks (Ra Press, 2015)—a poetry collection that catalogs his hiking of the “Adirondack 46ers” in northern New York. He holds an MFA from Drew University where he studied with poets Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Ira Sadoff, and Judith Vollmer. Crews serves as artist-in-residence with ARTS By The People, where he edits poetry and lyrical prose for Platform Review and the Platform Chapbook Series, and contributes as writing coordinator for Moving Words—a project that makes possible international collaboration among artists of prose, poetry, voice acting, and animation. His poem “Ecotone” was featured in the ABTP project Intonation—a collaboration between American poets and composers from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. His website: davidcrewspoetry.com.