Spring Inventory in a Wood Near Lund

The paraffin of bluebells.

The wood, a silent

stove, lit from within.

My father’s wood.

His small registry

of delights. All afternoon

the ants spelling their figures

over the needled floor

like hieroglyphs

scattering.

And like my father, I’ve stood

ankle deep in the brackish

tank of these ferns.

Stretched out in the private

flatbed of my thinking

and studied the circuitry

of alder leaf, branch

its tidal

constellations.

Sensed in nearby ponds

pikes engage

the trembling arsenal

of their bodies

as I’ve felt my own skin

quicken to its

suffering,

an inland gull

merely

the pitched cries

of a child, sky

its darkening cradle.

Each spring

I’ve watched my father

walk deeper

into this wood,

deeper

into its untamed

mansion,

year after year, sleeved

in the clotted weather

of its rooms,

the air’s inscrutable

fractions.

Now this abacus

of stones

turning in my hand

is all I have,

this common

denominator

of trees.

Even so rooks

in the attics

go on delivering

the dark river

of their songs,

between then and now

all of it spooling

into the evening’s

syncopated cavities.

It is late. The wood

a drifting cluster

of inflections

trembling in our blood

as ants decipher

their paths

along the forest floor

lifting their luggage

once more into the cellars

this earth becomes,

the moon a shilling

burning

at the leaf’s green sill

each blade

our porous

oriel.

It is late. The air

another form

of currency.

The bluebells too, a fuel

we know ourselves by

as small as it is, and brief,

mite, wood tic, continuing

their odysseys

through the cemeteries

of branch rot, clay

the rich kiln,

its lit vocabulary.

Let us speak in this accent

of alder, gull, ant, soil.

Now that you are gone

father

these words

are all I have.