A Michoacán pine loosens a spirant into the night, and deeper, the collective forest modulates a fricative. Deeper yet, the forest on fire. Silently. Suddenly: I hate everything I’ve ever written. Even the alright utterance. The forest, on the other hand, really knows how to put an observation between its teeth and let it speak for itself: order in not disrupting the order.
In June, advances. The rain. The frog mates. The velvet spider emerges. June: the whip snake, the reproduction of the winged ant. Owl song at night. Long-legged mosquitos abound. The mantle of the Virgin effloresces. Plovers roam the riverbank. Aphrodisiacs give. The cork tree flowers against extinction. June: germination. June: cinders.
In July, abundance: insectalia, snails, the wood mushroom, grand mushroom, wild, Amanita Caesarea, Agrocybes. The perfumed flowers of Saint John. The temporal stream. July: the serpent is born. Doves eat. Sulfur butterflies land on clover. The praying mantis camouflages in a Goldfinch song. The Pingüicola remains a carnivorous plant, mouth open. Fawn.
In August, proliferation. The Immortelle Sempervivum, everlasting flower. Guava. Dung beetles in their nest. The ground flush with Amanita Alexander. For one day or two, the adult Ephemera lives. August multiplies: the pendicule of agave, vertices on anise. Cronartium fungus blights the pine. The grand design of the dogface butterfly. The wild dove cuts air. Come eat the forest floor.
In March, risk, but: turtledoves court and the Oleander Hawk moth reposes on the oak. The Jerusalem cricket, a baby-faced villain, discovers pain. The alder discovers its flowers. The Groove-billed Ani screeches. In March: denticulate leather bugs and the roadrunner. Very agile, that black swallowtail. Heated, that Calandra Lark. Beguiling, that dragonfly nymph. Spurious, that son-of-a-gun fake coral snake: Scarlet King.
In April, vacuousness. Nobody light a match. The serpent, dizzy-deluded, sheds its skin and takes cover, poor soul. Between thorns, the cactus flower emerges. The Pine disseminates a tract and the Copperwood makes a paper storm, raving for its lost leaves. The insipid ficus of the cloud forest spins its head. The virulent Aphididae is circumlocuted by the sweet-tongued ladybug. Feminism takes hold on the pine, conical. Swallows, swallows, more swallows.
In May, extremity: Kingfisher, adult dragonfly, fish in the hot current. Irregular flight. Love in the thicket. Grackle in the sentry. The scorpion abounds and gall grows. The Clouded Yellow gets high on libating nectar. Serpents reproduce. The cryptic Cracker is often confused for tree bark. Deer shed their antlers on the cotton mouth floor. No one even look at a match. Even the tarantula fights for life.
Strike a surface with a matchstick and another short short year goes up in flames.
You and I won’t be able to do that—what with the high vowels we bemoan. Beneath them: need to know, need to know. You and I won’t be able to do what the forest right outside of us does. Out there it happens like this: in one breath, the shrike hangs its prey. In another, the forest mourns even the absence of the turkey. And not a word about it. Not the least extrapolation.
If I’m ever able to write, it will sound like that.
If I’m ever able to write, it will be a pine spirant or collective fricative. It will be a forest fire and a neck-snap. A skin shed, and another another another