“The Woods”
The springtime woods are a wonder in that they ever grew magnificent and tall. A muffled-echo, an empty habitat inside and under the shade of all. Noises unseen in moving silence, you can hear the stillness where time sways. Breezes brushing through green vibrance, with life—the canopy covers decay.
Reading the Poem
Forårsstemning i skoven (Springtime in a forest) by Godfred Christensen, 1916, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Inspiration
“The Woods” came from two ideas for poetry prompts combined into one.
Prompt 1: “Look outside and write what you see.”
Prompt 2: “The woods.”
The result being I looked outside and saw the woods, full of wonder.
Internal Tensions of Majesty
The poem plays on tensions between the senses, emptiness, fullness, life and death—capturing wonder and everything between.
Written in the Spring, my mind was on rebirth after winter. In one way, it could symbolize finding your purpose again, after the old things have passed away on the forest floor. And the new life covering all as green leaves soak in the sun.
That said, you cannot mention a forest without a sense of danger in the unknown.
That’s life. Exploration and discovery does not come without risk.
Even so, with the danger in adventuring into the unknown that is life, it’s worth it.
And we can still trust in the Maker of Heaven and Earth through it all.
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.Psalm 96:11–13 (NIV)