The Forest Speaks
The scarlet madrone twists, sinewy thighs swiveling to light.
Our dog laps bitter juice at the bar of her mossy well.
Bless this water fallen from a sky finally pillowed with clouds,
come to quench our forest’s thirst,
whose concealed screams from years of drought
caused cambiums to quiver,
made russet dust rise from desiccated leaves
that crunched beneath our feet.
Mushrooms blossom now, soft notes erupting into vibrant color:
honey bubbles of chantrelles, turkey tails rippling on a rotting log,
frilled petals of oyster mushrooms unfolding into alabaster fans,
clumps of pink ramaria that weave like coral ridges of convoluted brains
sending messages through a rooted intercom to tanoak, bay and fir,
demanding sugar in return for news and healing.
Encircled by her offspring, one redwood towers,
old as the Roman Empire;
her rotund girth four wedded trunks
defying droughts and fires and saws,
and rusty nails thick as loggers’ thumbs.
Ruth Mota lives on Mt. Madonna in the Santa Cruz Mountains on land owned by her family since the early 1960s. This poem expresses her love for the wonders of the Monterey Bay Area. She has taught poetry to men at the Rountree Correctional Facility in Watsonville and collected anthologies of their work that can be found in the Santa Cruz and Watsonville Library System. Her own work will soon be published in a national anthology of poems by teachers in the jail and prison system throughout the United States.
The scarlet madrone twists, sinewy thighs swiveling to light.
Our dog laps bitter juice at the bar of her mossy well.
Bless this water fallen from a sky finally pillowed with clouds,
come to quench our forest’s thirst,
whose concealed screams from years of drought
caused cambiums to quiver,
made russet dust rise from desiccated leaves
that crunched beneath our feet.
Mushrooms blossom now, soft notes erupting into vibrant color:
honey bubbles of chantrelles, turkey tails rippling on a rotting log,
frilled petals of oyster mushrooms unfolding into alabaster fans,
clumps of pink ramaria that weave like coral ridges of convoluted brains
sending messages through a rooted intercom to tanoak, bay and fir,
demanding sugar in return for news and healing.
Encircled by her offspring, one redwood towers,
old as the Roman Empire;
her rotund girth four wedded trunks
defying droughts and fires and saws,
and rusty nails thick as loggers’ thumbs.
Ruth Mota lives on Mt. Madonna in the Santa Cruz Mountains on land owned by her family since the early 1960s. This poem expresses her love for the wonders of the Monterey Bay Area. She has taught poetry to men at the Rountree Correctional Facility in Watsonville and collected anthologies of their work that can be found in the Santa Cruz and Watsonville Library System. Her own work will soon be published in a national anthology of poems by teachers in the jail and prison system throughout the United States.