[=#006400]
When I first woke up, I noticed a group, including Virgil and Ourania, on a hillside. I went to join them, and for a little while wasn't sure exactly what to do -- Virgil and his entourage were sitting, basking in the sunlight like a sect of lizards (Hmm. The collective noun for lizards...I know there is bound to be one. I shall ponder the matter further.) and Ourania, still full of energy and in the mood for a full frolic. I wasn't sure what to do -- I never am, times like these. I knew Ourania would join me if I sat...And that Virgil would let me go if I rose. I eventually decided to stick us all together, and sat down.

That was until Scape showed up. And this decision was so easy that I was away with only a small bow to excuse myself. Ourania, to my pleasant surprise, joined me. It has been ages since I saw Scape last. We greeted eachother with shock and joy, and commenced doing what we do best: silly walks. Turning circles in and out, skipping little half-leaps around eachother in small, self-contained patterns like the jumbling of particles in air. And, of course, playing with the trees, nuzzling them and rubbing against each other. A few times it was a little embaressing -- I mean, undestand that when I planned it, it was his side I was rubbing my cheek against and not -- oh, nevermind. It was funny enough.
It's interesting. I hadn't really thought about how much sitting down I've been doing with most of my time. How little running or playing. Until then, anyway: it was like stretching after a long sleep, and waking up to feel the bright spring air on your face. The season's changed; it's time for fancy-free frolicking, for frisky fun in the green woods. I'll need to remember that. Maybe, if I asked, my friends who are more inclined to thoughtful rest would join me... I'll just...have to work up the courage to ask. They would, right? Right.

Feeling unusually high-spirited as I was, I proposed a game of hide-and-go seek.

For once, a poem not done in Seed's name, but in my own. I wrote most of this last semester and finished it today. I must have been feeling masochistic, since it's a sestina.

[center]
An Endless Sestina

Freeze-Tag, Post Office, Horses – the things I used to play,
formed of my own body, their genesis in imagination.
I forged them with my friends, casting in flexible gold those games
That occupied a million summers. The swamp became a forest.
My movements, staggered through the mud, had no poetry.
I wandered alone, or guided a single friend: I needed no more community.

‘I rip your throat and kill u’ ‘U CHEATED!’ Is that what they call community?
No, Those Wolfquest WoW worlds are nowhere I could play;
Nothing that spins off of itself for me into spiraling poetry,
Nothing in filling up bars that stirs imagination:
I’d much rather lope in grey wolf shape in that forest .
I have no need for N00b-hunting games.

I freeze in terror at those games
Where I could be isolated from their Community,
Like a tree stomped out of its Forest.
I’d start it up, I’d want to Play
To see what so seizes others’ Imagination;
And I’d run and use that fear for bad Poetry.

Maybe I should just stick with Poetry
Frolic in a Frenzy, Free in Games,
Building perfect moments of Imagination.
I wouldn’t know how to really reach the Community,
But that’s fine. I know how to Play
Alone, making words to trees to Forest.

And then I find The Endless Forest:
It’s wordless. Just deer; A living painting, not poetry.
There, the players cast off words and play
Making names from symbols, miming games
That could be made.

No, seriously. While my accounting of such things is usually pretty poor....

It appears that today (or tommorow, but I have school tommorow) is Seed's 3rd birthday, and my third anniversery of playing TEF. Seed's first diary was written 3 years ago tommorow, a day after his creation.

Now, I haven't always been as good a community member as I should have... But I just wanted to say thanks. It's really good to be here.

A series of poems penned in my absence this fall... It's quite longer than I expected, in truth.

[center]Notes from Trees

1. The Wise Tree

Read the ground,
Read the gasping shreds left underhoof,
Stop crunching them.

Read tightened stems and storied bark,
Reading crisped rivers of written lines.
Read the letterforms of the veins,
Read the curl, the browning like smoldering paper:
Read the edges of the darkened spots of leaves.
Learn them.


2. The Sweet Olive Tree

Pluck a flower.
These blossoms, nose-tickling
As white clouds,
As cool, crisp air.

Let It waft from your fingertips
As they crush the scent, bright
As bark and plant-fiber, bound
As if little bouquets with woven ribbons.

3. The Redbud Tree

Avoid the sight of me until spring –
When my leaves are wet and red,
When my flowers unfold like a newbown fawn
When its legs are stick-thin and unsure in that season
When my tender petals
Are budding out flush pink.

Remember that me,
Erase all other revisions.


4. The oldwood tree
Listen for my creaking --
Listen for my branches, where the wood
Listens to the dryness and lets in water, and
Listen! Insects creep
Listening to the edges of my grain.

Please do some trimming.
Let new growth come.

5. The rustling tree

Catch the sound
Caught in a breeze so light it
Catches against your ear like the edges of hand.

Catch the voices of those airy spirits
Caught in the cages of my twigs –
Catch in your hand the sung- out rustling

Understandings from cloud-tips.
Keep them close.

6. The old oak tree

Let the light
Fall on you in puddles
In drops like rain
Or dapples on the back of a wild horse.

Let my branches shield you
As I do crows, or the squirrels
Who crawl across
The landscape of branching rivers I create.

Let me thank you for exhaling,
For making the breath
I breathe.


[i]7.

[=#006400]
I awoke to a forest that seemed stiller than usual. Certainly no one I knew was on, but I considered it the strange hour, more than anything else. I wandered over to da drinkplaats, where I had heard a fawn cry out, surrounded by deer that bore my name and little else. While I played transform briefly, I found it was not the best way to get to know other deer; I never even managed to greet the little fawn I had come out there to meet. While it was pleasant, circling as a dove, pondering the life of doves, who flicker on white wings into sight and pull above to some unseen heaven...I do wonder what their lives are like. I guess it's the old curiosity. Dove families, dove happiness... Of course, I am of the opinion that rabbits, wherever they hide in these woods, must be happier than doves. Just being a rabbit makes me happy; their bodies are small and soft and cosy, like they have a candle-flame beneath their skin and it flickers through their fur and blood; it circulates like oxygen and fills them up with something soft as wilting rose petals.

...Regardless, I heard another solitary deer, and encountered a lively fellow dressed in death's gear, for the full sake of contrast, who frolicked with me about the pond waters for a time, leading me on a bit of a dash to the other side of the water. We rested briefly in the shallows before meeting a deer who, as before, bore my name and nothing else (he is welcome to it; not thinking you have a name, even if you have the wrong one, is a sad and lonely thing) and taught him to enjoy a rolling laugh where the waters soak up around you and clean your back.

[=#CD96CD] In the snow, she remembers Toukan's leg hurts very much. In the snow, she knows everything is bright and sparkly and moving everywhere, reflecting in her pupils like little stars and drifting down like volcanic ash or the prettiest red leaves or sunlight falling in little motes and she gets to snuggle, even with strangers, if she shakes in the cold. Hyacinth does not know how to feel about snow.
It is a new year, a new year, and an old Hyacinth; still scared by a little fawn's bleating, still darting behind him like a shield, still distracted by something on the edge of her mind and the falling of snow. Same old Hyacinth. She sits with Toukan and a friend whose name escapes, framed and surrounded by sad little graves. Hyacinth wonders what it is like to be dead. She thinks it is cold, but is it colder than snow? She feels it is dark. But she has been cold and dark before, and has not been dead. She has wished to be dead, when she was cold and dark, but she was not dead. Like how deer are animals and run but not all animals run. Yes. Kaoori woke up, while there was all that spinning and imagining the dark. She likes Kaoori, who is little and quiet. She considers trying being little, on a permanent basis. It could be fun.
Hyacinth sleeps, and tries very hard not to dream. It does not work, and she is back in the room, staring at the stone. Her arm hurts, but that is silly because it hasn't grown back yet. It is over there, on his desk. Hello, arm. It is a dream, so the arm waves. She knows it is a dream, then: all the times he took her apart, they never waved. She wished they would have: it was very lonely in the room. It is only him and bits of her. She tries to dream herself away, but the door is opening and he is coming down the stairs and something is in his hand, and sparks fall onto the ground all around it, lighting up the staircase slowly...
And she is awake and a fawn gives her flowers.

Oh, to dance with my beloved in the fireflies, the music of our hoofbeat, the beating of soft wings, the stirring of flowers, delicate as the movements of angels... Perhaps this is the sort of touch I would fight for, her pressing against my neck as we dance... Perhaps it is something that cannot be fought for.

The day started with the realization of twilight, and the fact that I lost my candles. Ah, well -- the Lightbringer's Festival will allow me to get some more. I saw Saosin and Virgil on the hill and went to join them. While I'm not sure why he was a fawn, I was very happy to see him. We sat together, snuggled close, watching the red sink into the earth like water. Eventually both fell asleep, and I considered joining them...

Until I noticed her. I hadn't seen my dear wife since my return (and oh, is that a story to tell), and so we immediately fell to catching up and nuzzle-tagging. Then I led her to the fireflies, in a patch of flowers. We danced. We ran. Our bodies swerved and dipped like those bright stars. I could not stop touching her: her ear like the tattered edge of the wing of a fallen butterfly; her soft wet nose like the ground after the rain; her warm neck ; her soft fur, gleaming in the dimmed light. We'd dance and then leap, we'd leap and then circle each other like watchful birds; we'd circle and we'd laugh and nuzzle one another. The flower patch formed, to me, a long infinity sign, and as I turned figure eight upon figure eight, chasing after her, I felt a bright infinity, and endless future, on me.

Of course, eventually someone showed up and startled my little bird into flight, and we ran into the birch forest, where I had to say my farewell.


I've seen a good many of my friends since my return: they've all done such a fine job of welcoming me home. I'm sorry if today wasn't very coherent; it's the fireflies, you see.
But I'm glad to see that things are well. I'm glad to feel back.

Something I penned in my absence this fall.



((This has been another visit to Seed's Poetry Corner, brought to you today by my final for my poetry workshop.))

Grades aren't in yet, but the work's all done so I'm free. Free at laaaast!

So, what have I missed in the forest since my occaisonal fall absence?

Yeah. I've been so busy with school that I haven't had time for my favorite community ever. I'll be back -- keep me posted -- feel free to chat when I'm on MSN... All that jazz. I don't mean to do this -- it may just be something about fall...