I went north where woods cover the hills.
Where people hover by the lakes
and succumb to the silver cast
of the sun,
to clear stones at the bottom
of the water.
People have not been here long.
There are fragments of original forest,
a wilderness calling to come back.
The epiphany of a world without us,
without children and curious women,
of men erecting houses and digging trenches.
The wilderness passing,
becoming a shade,
a veil,
and I talk to it as a brother,
uninvited.
I tell it my dream.
I call to its vanishing.
I sing tenderly its fading songs,
the voices of its soul.
There is nothing I can do.
Eternity goes on.
Perhaps I will come back
one more time.
Tell the wilderness my dream.
How I treasured it and made it mine.
How I never left without calling
into the wind,
I too have been changed.
I too have been invaded.
I too have silences that once were music.
And I go on without regret,
with only care
for those who changed me,
and left a shadow looking for its source.