In the dark, I pass a Schwarzwald.
Pine trees drip and drool in the obsidian pre-dawn.
The thick black copse is cold and damp like a grave
and thin frozen firs scrape the dirty oily sky without giving shelter.
No lingering for me.
I feel unease and the apprehension that Hansel and Gretel should have had.
Dank, inky winter forests drive ice worms into my soul.
This dense night wood makes a sunless and moonless and skyless cave of phantoms,
an eternal night with anxious chill.
Does it bring a foreboding of the future?
A prescience of danger?
Or a deep connection with prior life dark troubles,
just out of grasp of the conscious mind?
Frozen winter groves have penetrating glacial wetness.
They are Savage.
Their dankness tortures me, magnifying my mortal frailty.
When my time comes,
my walk through the valley of the shadow of death will be
a gauntlet through pelting, freezing rain in a Schwarzwald.
(Author’s note: Schwarzwald is Black Forest.)