Eastern Forests

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.