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The Myth of Forests

from Tamarock by Jesse Matas

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about

Part of this poem was previously published by The Fourth River under the name "The Dream".

www.thefourthriver.com/index.php/2017/01/tributaries-the-dream

lyrics

The Myth of Forests

The dream saw you before you woke.
The creek, the clear creek leaving the lake.
Where it was possible to see a temperature.
Where you dream had run in desperation—
Your sleep was maudlin.
You casted one incipient belief after another, sploshing through Canada.
Smart, you think, as you notice a life underground.
You thought you might be crazy to love in such complexity.
In your dream you drew your body over, dam after dam.
Scrape the crust off an idyll ‘til it’s bloody.
Incise with Swiss steel.
Don’t cauterize.
Watch for colour.

On my arms and legs, marks of a forest scored my skin— marks of refusals.
Further down, dense vegetation rallied throughout my lungs
and I scuttled to the side of the trail, reading a sign screwed to an oak tree:
a boundary sign.
The language was blue on white on metal and hinted at a calendar year.
I moved through anyway.
Now when I imagine futures I try to imagine the actions of forests:
objects of regeneration being the futures we have always acted of.
This story, this boundary, being one of many.

You dream finds a job.
You work nights, mornings too.
The creek is cold but your legs never get so.
Break off.
Spend as much as you can on words.
Throw dirt over.
Water.

credits

from Tamarock, released November 21, 2018

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Jesse Matas Manitoba

Jesse Matas is a musician and a poet from Treaty 1 territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

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