With the last green change of the year I come into the dark forest And rest in the warmth of the needles As the long shadows gather in the Hollows. I sense the unlost smell of moss-, The tremor of earth combined with the secret Of roots reaching to the underground lights Of the little wild flowers that await spring. They have great patience and they seem to speak In the slow unraveling of time. Here I know continuity, the cipher Of the expanding life and death of wood and stone.

• Robert Duncan