The canopy should not be overlooked | Maggie Hess

The canopy should not be overlooked.  You can scour it for toddler scooters, mated shoes, random chairs, twenty feet up, perfectly placed.  You are reminded of how small you are and how blind you are in the large scheme, the mystery.    Then it’s the last houses, the tumbling rocks behind your car.

Visiting often, you remember the water, the foamy days, the murk after rain, the typical but excited cry of the kingfisher swooping the length of that little bridge. 

It takes much longer to know every tree.  A tree falls in the forest, toppling partially onto another tree.  Roots again, clinging and sucking still for life.  In fact knowing every tree is an impossible task, for someone sticks their head in the badger’s hole or fish flow on constantly.  

The only way to snap a picture or memorize a wooded acres is knowing its impossible to capture anything.  I challenge you to catch a launching flock of turkeys, then show me the flock somewhere.  What was will never be again, by nature all things decay and move on.

Indian Review | Indian Literature Magazine | Authors | Maggie Hess writes for Indian Review. Read her poems and visit for literature

Indian Review | Indian Literature Magazine | Authors | Maggie Hess writes for Indian Review. Read her poems and visit for literature