in the woods

In all of these conversations in all of these locations there is good and not so good an maybe even evil. I had an image of their interaction in my head, but another interaction with my friend Evan Clark resulted in his creation of an image other people can interact with and that interacts with this poem.

in the woods there was a promise

a promise valley people

might kill the people of the mountain

for but she didn’t have to kill

anyone to get from city to woods

she knew that part at least

though somehow she decided

paying 6,000 dollars was necessary

to end up near trees that were not placed

by people or whose futures weren’t

forgotten for the sake of power lines

she knew she could drive to trees

but then she’d drive back the next day for

bed or sandwiches so she paid 6,000

for the freedom of the forest with the added

benefit of a cage to keep her from

wandering back to the city

luckily the people she paid

called the cage a classroom

they very much liked

each bar that they had built

which they knew as pushing

you to be uncomfortable

the same uncomfortable they’d been when

they first went to the woods and been provided

bars by some kind them she didn’t know but knew

by knowing the new them actually the new them

hadn’t built the cage at all it had been there for

awhile but no one knew its origin

in the cage was a nice lake and some mountains

the cage grew and shrank according to traditions

a necessary part of traditions was her not knowing

them so they were new enough for her that she could be

uncomfortable like they had been and realize that in the city

she had been reigned in by ritual or having a comforter on her bed

she didn’t notice that none of them were standing in the cage

with her while they talked so fondly of their memory or idea of the place

and they kept swimming in the lake so she thought they must be in the same place

soon though someone remembered a part of the cage they hadn’t mentioned yet

a bar that had looked really nice when they were inside the thing

when they erected bar again it happened to go right where she was standing

piercing directly through her foot

hello? She asked.

This is more than uncomfortable.

I cannot really move.

From here I cannot swim in the lake.

I only have two trees to look at.

I ache.

Once we were in the cage! They said.

From the sentence she deduced their new locale.

Can’t you see better from out there?

Don’t you know I’m bleeding everywhere?

So you say you are uncomfortable? We were once uncomfortable.

No no no

Two days ago, I was uncomfortable.

Now pain has forced my eyes shut.

Just look out at the lake and you’ll be fine.

I can’t see anything.

I can’t open my eyes.

This last bar you talked about has wound up through my foot.

Bar?

Tradition?

There are no traditions. You shape your own cage.

I really wouldn’t have put steel through my foot if I had a choice.

Do you notice you keep saying I? We gave you the classroom with a lake so you’d say we.

We don’t want such a constricting classroom?

Our classroom looked like that and it was good.

Where are you?

They were outside the cage in a cage they’d built to maintain the cage.