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# System prepended metadata

title: The Disorderly Order of the Forest

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# 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
