The Trees

I always forget when what how
I always forget who where why
I never remember the way
to San Jose, or freedom, or Narnia,
or Westeros, or Mordor,
but I’ve heard you don’t just
walk into Mordor like you don’t
walk into a tree. It might be painful.
It might lead to taking medicine
for the headache from the impact of
the bark. I’m all bark, no bite.
Trees bite. Biting trees are the
worst hazard I’ve had to contend
with today. It’s safer in the city. Less
dangerous flora. Fauna is a pretty word,
one that suggests cute and cuddly, but
fauna hides the teeth that rend, the claws
that scratch. Fauna is 300 pounds of pure
muscle that knows you’re not playing
dead, and it’s not playing. It can’t play.
It has to protect itself from the biting trees,
the kite-eating trees. The trees of forgetting,
the trees of pain and sheer terror. The trees
one does not walk into. Watch out, most of all,
for the trees.

Restoring the Collection

Someday, the UFOs will arrive
silent and stealthy
in the big cities,
stealing away the runaway
farmer population,

returning them to the flock,

erasing their memories of
what happened at the hands of
little grey men,

leaving them thinking they returned
of their own volition.
Leaving them thinking they returned
because they missed the quiet
or the town
or the space,

But not because they were being returned
to the paddock.

Bill Abbott is the author of "Let Them Eat MoonPie," the history of poetry slam in the Southeast. He has been published in Ray's Road Review, Radius, The November 3rd Club, Flypaper Magazine, and The Sow's Ear. Mr. Abbott lives in Ohio and teaches creative writing at Central State University.