Forest Woman

~ by Mary Reynolds Thompson

She is sunlight and shadow, rooted in dark earth
and reaching for sky.
She is the breath of inspiration, the vividness of dreams.
The clear-cut path is nothing to her.
She spins and spirals, loses herself in the labyrinth,
in a thousand colors of green.
Through eons and extinctions she has thrived.
To enter her world, is to brave the creative fire
that brings forth seed-bursts of new life.
She is magic, a whirl of wonder in a world
made plain by literalness.
From her dark folds things grow and green.
Her skirts are bushes, her hair a tangle branches.
Her hollowed limbs, home to winged and furred ones,
teeming insects.
She speaks in myriad tongues.
Inside her, circle upon circle reveals an ancient way of being.
She will never walk the straight path
nor embrace too-bright light of modern consciousness.
She knows everything is birthed from darkness.