The Dark Woods

Every day I get closer to this elusive woods
but my youth kept me in the meadow
now, the trees are bare, I can see through
the stripped forest, the nakedness makes it seem
so frail, so empty, so hollow, like me,
I walked through the downtrodden leaves, only to
hear the decaying crunch of another year, I no
longer fear the jaunt through this woods, my
courage withdrawn, nothing left to chance,
nothing to gain yet, Spring came, colored her
forest in garnet green, the color of life, and now
she's clothed again with mystery, I cannot go
through her thick woods, she's filled with death, even
though she's draped in green up to her nape, yet they're 
in there, they're out to take me to my home of no return,
I do a U-turn and laugh, and call myself a coward, but
I won't travel through this woods where my friend committed
suicide on that warm day in Spring.

- John Hardesty