Forest walk by Sven Kretzschmar

Take a swim in the darkening lagoons

under my eyes, live vicariously through a piece

of cake served after a walk through the forests,

this collection of not-yet-peeled,

not-yet-burned carbon compounds waiting

to become firewood. And planks, roof beams,

building material. It grows

from moist autumn soil, a brown-golden well

we dwell on, feast on, grown from, eventually

dwell in.

Hollow tree trunks where dwarfs come out

at night cleaning away our picnic leftovers.

Meadowsweet on a clearing

laughs at us, or maybe with us, as we pass below bee-

bullets no hunter fires at us; a game preserve without

presence merits no gundog.

A robin chirps through my thinking; I am back here

in the crackling, rustling undertone of being.

In the distance: a motorway. Retraction of nature,

down to earth. Water splashes from puddles –

wannabe lagoons darkening asphalt.

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Sven Kretzschmar is a German poet. His poetry has been published widely in Europe and overseas, among other outlets with Poetry Jukebox in Belfast, in Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019) and Turangalîla-Palestine (Dairbhre, 2019), and has been shortlisted for various awards and competitions. Further work is forthcoming in 100 Words of Solitude (Rare Swan Press, 2020), Constellate Magazine and The High Window.

See more at: https://trackking.wordpress.com/ and Instagram: @sven_saar_poetry