In a Forest of Late Friends

by Dan Gerber

I have let you all go. Why do you keep returning,
as if there were something left unsaid,

something I can’t bring to mind? A feeling
is only a feeling experienced in a

very particular way, a moment we
reach for as it fades, leaving us only

a taste, but a taste we now have a tongue for,
as a young king might don a cloak to circulate,

unrecognized, among his soldiers, to know
their mettle, their fears, and fraught loves,

while enduring a long night before battle,
I move among you and you among

the many selves I assume every day,
sensing what comes and goes in these trees.