Sylvan

By Anna Short

I enjoyed the woods, to the

thimbled trees and arrowhead leaves

wet, black dirt. The sinking, sucking mud.

green shoots bursting forth from the reds and browns of debris

polished glass-clear and trickling, creeks,

pebble over pebble, sinking down

on knees, on palms and placing our lips to the surface,

the barest touch. To

following it up, and jumping over fallen limbs.

To being pricked and thoroughly burred,

of mosquito bites, and raspberry bushes, the tiny spiked

seedpods of this plant or that.

I remembered the woods, to the

lump-headed snapping turtles, sliding into the duckweed and algae,

carving an entrance through the green and more green.

Of cranes tip-toeing through

shallow water, needle beaks

piercing the surface

to retrieve the silver trinkets, underneath

that squirmed and shone in the sun.

To the pale-bellied bullfrogs that

harrumphed and groaned on balmy spring nights.

Seeing fat tadpoles with dumb looks upon

their circle squish faces.

The trilling bats, that swooped overhead.

The deer that would jump over fallen limbs

and drink from the creek

with the slightest of touches

on cold mornings

when their breath blew out in great puffs

dissolving in the air

as they came to strip the bark off the plum tree

I had planted two years before

and eat the shriveled, not yet ripe, dirt-red apples

from our tree.