Revisionist Poetry – “The Forest’s Quiet Conquest” – Colonizing Decay, v.3

Under the veil of leaves,
the forest keeps its oldest pulse:
not silence, but labor.

Fungal life ascends the trunk
in pale, deliberate script,
curling over bark like a secret
the tree can no longer hold alone.
It enters every fault and fracture
with the patience of rain
and the intimacy of breath.

Nothing here is merely ending.
The fallen branch becomes a threshold;
the broken log, a brief cathedral
where moss, mold, and shadow
make a consecration of ruin.

I have stood in such places
where dread and wonder
share the same thorned root.
To look closely is to learn
that decay is not emptiness
but appetite, memory, renewal—
the earth’s own dark eloquence.

So the woods continue,
silent and exacting,
teaching us again
that what returns to the ground
does not vanish.
It changes its name.