Białowieża Forest, primeval
weaving dark foliage
through her dreams.
There were no words for the smell
or feel of soft moss on a fallen trunk.
It lived nowhere now
except her childhood
which was not a place
or even a time anymore
lost in a humectant bubble
timewarp.
Nothing could be more permanent
than something lost
the Azure Tit she once found
its tiny white belly
still warm
the soft blue of the wings.
They don’t make blue like that anymore
The ghosts of bison and elk,
wild boar, hovered in her memory
like the emperor oak, fallen
damp bark beneath her feet.
Here there was no bark, no soft crunch,
only concrete.
The high pitched dee dee dee
of the Tit’s song
replaced by tram clank and train rumble
children yelling
a continuous murmur
through the urgent motion
of present tense
like a small bird, drawing her back.
Thank you Magdelena for a poem with wonderful reverberant lines. By chance yesterday, I was having a drink with a Polish friend who said he had never been there. As a fan of forests, for decades I have wanted to visit the remnant of the vast primeval forest that furred Europe. (And by chance in my comment to Kit's Azure I rabbited on about blue).
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