Revisionist Poetry – “What the Woods Make of Loss” – A Bit of Goldsworthy & Adams, v.3

On a dry day, the woods become a gallery
of broken trunks and exposed grain.
I walk beneath thick leaves
and find the fallen trees
as if they had been arranged for study:

a rib cage of branches,
a canted spine of wood,
a sunlit tangle of lines
that seems to belong to both accident and design.

Goldsworthy would know this language:
stone balanced on stone,
leaf folded into leaf,
shape made from what is already falling apart.
And Adams would know the light—
how it picks out the pale seam of bark,
how it deepens shadow into form.

The earth cracks softly underfoot.
The air smells of dust and sap.
Even decay looks deliberate here,
as though time itself were an artist
patient enough to work in silence.

I stand before one fallen trunk
etched with shade and splintered gold,
and see not an ending
but a reordering:
the woods turning absence
into line, texture, pattern, and breath.