Folk Tale

There are mountains where no one sees another man or woman for years.

Such places enter mythologies and then the frail mind

Populates the real mountains with imagined parliaments.

Psychologists can’t explain it. Anthropologists

Say we cannot imagine emptiness in sacred or profane forests …

I think this is just a matter of the tongue:

When we’re alone we talk to ourselves

And that’s that.

And then, there’s my old mother with her arms full of pine cones

Where formerly there was nothing

And where soon enough there will be autumn rain…

S.K.