_A forest is a beautiful place.
_
_ Aspiring pines
_ arrowheads spun
_ toward evergreen skies
_ colors vibrantly true―
_ sturdy sequoias
_ wrapped in rabbit-scent.
_ Stillness felt through skin
_ was how God meant
_ the sunrise.
_ It cannot stay.
_
_ Ecosystems decay.
_
_ Snakeskin resin
_ weeping white
_ powderpost beetle
_ spending its larvae
_ in decomposing furred host―
_ detritus eaters clusters
_ of clotted shadow.
_ Hunger a carpeted ghost.
_ This I know:
_
_ A forest is a beautiful, deceiving place.
Tim Merrill is an attorney residing in Utah. He is an award-winning author who has previously published in BYU Studies and the Journal of Mormon History. He is married with five children, two hamsters, and one bearded dragon.
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