Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The Forest

by
April 2022, no. 441

The Forest

by
April 2022, no. 441

There could be someone, there, walking through a forest – upright or
slightly bending – gathering, not berries, or fallen nuts, or mushrooms,
but thoughts; there could be thoughts like whining insects that drill down
through the air to this someone, who is not ‘someone’ to insects, but
at most, might be a chemical, electrical or visual site; there could be someone

over there, making noises in a forest, shaking off the always-fleeing
thought of fleeing from the always-being of their own country; in their
head, packing up the child, the dog, the goat, the –

can you hear it now, the whining, no, not an insect really, but if real can
be a metal thing, airborne, or a steel box, grunting and churning through
the mud, ‘really’ must be how the thing advances calmly through a forest,
seeing – if a thing can see – other objects running off; they call them
‘signals’, as the thing does –

the thing detecting signals seems calm but it is metal – a signal’s walking
by again, restless, through the forest, moving slowly, making sounds to
itself and not – as would be less unusual – to another signal, but as if in
a loop, making sense of itself – in its system, the fleeting-but-recurring
thought of fleeing, in a loop – and there is one, hanging from a tree –

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.