Hunters Stand at Dawn

We pause
maybe five
minutes and stand
listen as forest morning
            comes alive
                 moves in life
           around us

I see the trees
    dark angled shafts of teeming
    strung between
green vibrations of  canopy
and mountainside carpet
the yawning saplings
  sassafras
      hickory palms
     
      I feel our dark
  shaping from toes
     to torso
       columns of our
    own leaning height
     
Clicking sips past
   wings decend from rost
ticks cling and climb from
the roots we've put down
         leaves push out
      dogwood petals sail
lackadaisical down
     we stand
      trunk and hand
       and head still

how many journeys
   just past around
about and in between us
other fathers and sons
generations passing to
            eons stretching down
               as we stood at dawn
         waiting for a bird to call

waiting for the sun to rise
  for bones to drift to dust
       and the forest to burn
a clean fire
leaving only white ash
         and mountains rolling
    molten