Three Poems by Lauren Martin
The Death of Nature
The woods are thick,
alive,
thriving as the home to
billions of microscopic
residents.
Trees fallen,
hollowed,
empty.
Resting upon each other’s
rotting corpse.
No pulse,
no proof of existence except
the remnants of
their body.
Newborn maggots and
beetles feast,
on their makeshift,
collapsing home.
Your rotting timber corpse
is putrid as it lays
messily in the path.
You do not
stir.
You make no
sound.
But your leaves still
blow in the wind as you
lay in eternal
slumber,
providing resources
for a new generation
of life.
Nature Is Calling
i love the call of the songbird
as it begs for my
attention.
singing its
incessant tune
into the inescapable
expanse of the
forest.
does it know the
burden it lays on me
to listen to its ballads?
to be the only one to hear its
cry of sorrow?
to ignore
its chirps and
hums, just as if I
was ignoring
the answering machine
from a long-forgotten lover.
how difficult it is for me
to walk away from it
because I cannot
call back.
Mother Nature
Mother asked me what
I wanted to be when I grew up.
Mother, I responded.
I do not know;
I am too young;
there are too many options.
Mother disagreed,
she said I could choose anything,
be anything,
aspire to be anything
I set my heart to,
no matter how far away
it seemed.
A Mother, then, I said, since
she needed an answer.
like you.
Mother smiled that half-sad smile
she gives me and my sister
on half-sad days.
Mother was not the right answer,
I guess