There was a way of living in the woods with pines overhead
and needles sloughed off and the sun almost blocked out except a
finger of light on the bluebells and my bare knees, pressed into the
loam as I studied mushrooms the size of stubbed pencils with grey
gills and moss like green cloud formations over the mushy log and
a daddy-longlegs stepped from softness to softness onto the back
of my hand and car sounds and kitchen sounds far away and no
one wanted me or knew who I was anymore and maybe this went
on for years and the teacher was wrong when she said, You have an
emptiness inside when I drew that picture of the oak with a hole in
its trunk because I know that’s where the squirrel lives who eats the
acorn and drops it too.