This is the land of your poems.
The trees covet sky and water;
droplets leap from miles up
and wash away our windshield.

This road is overwhelmed, bumping
its shoulders with the ankles of trees
who don’t perceive the winding below.
We slip by unnoticed,

too small to be considered
anything but ground dwellers
snuffling for mushrooms.
Really, we are here to gather ourselves.

We pass seven cordoned rockfalls:
a sign to scratch off the seven days
we have gathered like barnacles.
We hide in the scent of the forest,

relearning stillness with a quiet engine.

Zenobia Frost and Francis Thompson (in collaboration)
First printed in Petrichor, 2011