Matter Is a Shut Fortress

"See your account in the woods,"
Boasts one of the purveyors
Of culture carried on invisible waves,
American Telephone and Telegraph.

I don't trust them. I need them,
I make obeisance to them,
I believe them and the gnomes
Of indoor-dwelling bipeds in shirts

Who have lost lifetimes laboring
In their mines to worship them
And make us all more powerful,
Together at least, than the old gods.

But I don't believe in them.
I know they are women and men,
Or at least the hungry ghosts
In the brains of men and women

Ever since no one knows when.
These are the creatures like me,
Not wholly creatures at all,
Any more, certainly not whole.

We live in the shadows of ourselves,
Our selves in the shadows of words,
Our words in the shadows of trees
That live inside the outside of us,

The woods, eternally gloomy,
Terrible, haunted, rich with flesh
That cannot easily be captured
By hands or minds. Winds are rising.