Eastern Forests

Charlie Smith

JANUARY 2002

                  CHARLIE SMITH

                 EASTERN FORESTS

I have been walking in the eastern forests
through everglades and hammocks into a mixed deciduous
  woodland
where hummingbirds and woodpeckers cohabit in the
  downy hawthorn bushes
and the pepper and salt skipper moth, hunted
by the white-eyed vireo and other creatures,
batters its way through broken branches of shortleaf pine
and smooth sumac, a senseless bug without what we call
  heart,
though as everyone knows some intention, impervious to
  special pleading,
propels this creature and the eastern black oak acorn
  weevil,
among thousands of others, across vast reaches of
  transition, mixed
deciduous and oak-hickory forests, along with wood frogs
  and flying squirrels,
like love does in our nomenclature, or rumors of gold.