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Forests are where you hear the trees—
a foreign film murmuring.
Undercover life forces tunnel, restructure
the strata of decay, fumbling the wet & bronze & rosewood needles,
nudging & moving down & into
hidden homes.
Some dusks you think you see stained-glass windows
& brackish, inland pools fill the eyes.
Part of the winter forest’s strategy is transparency,
but that makes it feel known.
So the subnivean zone forms—
under-snow rooms, or unconscious zones
in which you feel no hunger
& curl deaf & blind
in apparently meaningless passages.
Miranda Field’s first book, Swallow receieved the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference 2001 Bakeless Award in poetry. She lives in Manhattan and teaches workshops at the New School and NYU.
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