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.