The Path to Blue Sky

She set out in the early morning mist
amid the daisies and the sound of larks
speaking in the dialect of the forest
once spoken by elders among her kind
now unknown in the passage of time…

She left no trace as she hurried past
stone giants hurled from granite peaks
left as valiant sentinels at the gate
sworn to protect survivors on the way
from cool green waters to blue sky…

Stepping over twigs and fallen leaves
she found her pathway blocked by logs
not felled by wind, the work of saws
unheard of slaughter, breech of peace
amidst the dreadful stench of grease…

Alongside ghosts of mangled stumps
she saw a tall and lanky man watching
waiting in anticipation of her passing
his arboreal torturer held without effort
as if he saw at once her predicament…

Why, oh why… his task lies far away
in fallen valleys. How could man walk
along this path of much that matters
in the magic heaven sent as sun awoke
to fresh and fragrant hemlock scent …

But then he gestured toward the mess
of wounded wood he’d stacked in haste
“let nothing go to waste; it felled itself”
he said. “A landslide swept it all away
it wasn’t me! Is there another way…”

She licked her upper lip and smelled
the scent of truth with which he spoke
she blushed, then flew across the gap
and she was gone; far above his sense
of what she was and where she went.