If you enjoy reading this piece, I hope you will visit the Indiegogo page I’ve created to support my first book of poems. By visiting, sharing, or contributing before July 2, 2014, you can help make my book a reality!

I.

I grew up in an Eastern forest, among stands of hardwoods and clusters of evergreens, where a walk in the woods was an act of wonder. As an adult I still walk for inspiration, but I also turn to the woods when I’m trying to learn how to be in my body, which is often a painful place to be. When I make my way through a forest of young, mature, damaged, dying, fallen, and growing trees, I do not judge their wild, searching forms the way I sometimes judge my own. The oak on the forest floor with its root ball in the air? Generous food for new life. The mature…