From the road the ravine looks like an old crime scene
Dead vines coil like ropes around the bare bones of
fallen trees, leafless skeletal limbs reach at odd angles
and the large bare rocks gleam as white as skulls
Soon the dry leaves will rustle and out of the black
caves between boulders will emerge the sleeping
marmots and their newborn who blink at the gray light
of the chilled world, and test the ground with tender feet
Soon the frozen ice in the hills will melt and flow
through the fissures in cliff walls and will soak into
the arid ground and a stream will waken this dormant place.
Green moss, new ferns and ivy will adorn the rotting logs
Tendrils will encircle them, pull them slowly, irretrievably
into the hungry earth, where feasting worms and microbes
will unleash the process of decay, and the soil will fold
perished wood into itself with a gentle, insistent turning
Beneath the verdancy, the sun-glints of new, clear life-bringing
currents, the profusion of leaf and flower, stripling and vine,
that overtakes the gorge, the dead are forgotten, remembrance
obscured, except from splintered hearts acquainted with grief
Green and gold and wild, life will flourish, as lush new growth
conceals all below, the churning cycle, the mandate of death.
Leaves breathe innocence into the air, all is incarnate, ripening
under an ageless sun, strong, bold, as heedless as young love.
Dorothy Cantwell has worked as an educator, actor and playwright. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Constellate Literary Journal, Flash Boulevard, River and South Review, Poetrybay, Angel City Review, Amethyst, First Literary Review East and other print and online journals. Her poem, Edward under the Sky, (Brownstone Poets Anthology 2024) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in NYC.