My shoes celebrate the forest floor
weeks ago they crunched the leaves on this path
loud and delectable
homemade potato chips for the feet
and today the frozen mud, like clay
yielding in its satisfying way
as I move through these trees again
asking in each season
whether strangers who know your secrets
are really strangers at all?
The hemlocks know what I wonder
as together we lean over the cliff,
all our branches stretching for
the first flakes of snow.
I want to know
will they come as big fat kisses
that wet my cheeks?
As gossamer angels
resting on my eyelashes?
Or fast and furious,
not able to clean this world fast enough
but trying all the more?
Stacey Murphy __ Poems 