# The Disorderly Order of the Forest **by Ruth Nasrullah** I go for the birdsong, smell of pines, disorderly order of the forest it owns mysteries, miracles – trees – some reach a hundred feet to the sky some lay across the trail spawn a universe in their rotting trunk last week I drove to the trailhead a phalanx of shimmery women floated out of the forest chased by the fire which created them on trail silvery threads covered the ground soot stained shriveled tree branches; occasional bright green ferns preened among blackened pine cones I hiked ahead and saw wavy columns of white smoke one, two, three, four I understood the forest burned I ran no one wants to be a brown fungus a woman made of smoke a silver strand of witness unless it is decreed. I fled the forest