There is a forest that
I can’t get away from.
A forest of tombs still
as tree trunks. There
is a forest. The smell
of red pine needles-
the pathways of my
ancestors. There is
a forest. When I am
not alive like I usually
am. There is a forest.
When I step in mink
tracks, I know these
tracks in my tendons.
I know this forest. It
pounds into the shale,
like a crumbling ravine
of hunger. I know this
forest. Returning from
vanished glaciers. A
ghost in the temperature.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.