The Sylvan Requiem of Unwritten Hours

The forest breathes in whispers long interred,
A cathedral of boughs that chant in rusted green,
Where roots like arthritic fingers clutch the word
Of some primeval psalm none living have seen.

He comes to trap the specters of the glen,
To wring from mist what mortal hands forget—
The slow unraveling of years in lichened fen,
The grief of birches nursing leaves of jet.

Through veils of spider-silk that mark the years,
He spies the relic none but ghosts frequent—
A cottage stooped as widows drowned in tears,
Its timbers groaning with the scent of lament.

Within, the air lies thick as varnish dried,
A still-life rotted on Time’s moldered easel—
Yet there, beneath a slate of ash implied,
A letter sleeps in dust’s ceremental weasel.

The seal, a bloodless wound; the script, a trail
Of spider-legs that stagger ‘cross the page—
“To whom remains when shadows lift their veil,
I write this dirge for one who shares my cage.

Three decades past, these woods became my bride,
I sought to paint the sigh between each breath—
The pause before the petal’s suicide,
The glimmer on the cliffside after death.

But oh, the forest bleeds a darker art—
Each stroke I laid, the trees drank deep and stole,
Till twilight’s fingers pried apart my heart
And left this hollow where they buried whole.

Beware the copse where yew trees clutch the rain,
The glade that hums with absence of a sound,
For here the hours coil like serpents slain,
Their scales the shattered clocks beneath the ground.

Flee, brother of the brush, ere dusk descends—
These woods crave portraits etched in flesh, not oil.
They’ll take your years to mend what autumn rends,
And hang your soul where willows weep and boil.”

The painter laughs—a dry leaf’s brittle song—
“What are these ramblings of some addled mind?
The forest’s but a shape—I’ll prove him wrong,
And paint the truth these shadows try to blind.”

He dips his brush in evening’s ebbing light,
Mixes his tears with dew’s mercurial sheen—
A canvas stretched between the day and night,
A bridge of hues where mortal and unseen

Might meet as lovers in forbidden tryst.
The trees lean close, their bark like wrinkled brows,
As twilight’s tendrils, amethyst-obsessed,
Cocoon the artist in the wood’s carouse.

Three days he paints, three nights he blends his breath
With fog’s slow waltz across the forest floor—
The cottage watches, holding still as death,
The letter yellowing beside the door.

At last, he steps back from the fevered work—
A masterpiece of shadows given tongue—
Where birches weep in oils that twist and jerk,
And skies curdle with clouds forever young.

But as the moon bleeds through the canopy,
The canvas shudders with a stolen sigh—
The painted trees reach out with ghoulish glee,
And drag him through the portal of wet dye.

The forest drinks him like a vintage wine,
His years distilled to pigment-threaded rain—
One moment, flesh; the next, a brushstroke line
In some eternal dusk’s devouring vein.

The cottage crumbles into motes of time,
The letter folds itself to memory’s husk—
Only the painting hangs in air sublime,
Its frames the teeth of twilight’s closing tusk.

Now wanderers who brave the yew’s domain
Report a figure through the mist’s false door—
A man who paints with fingers made of rain,
Repeating scenes already painted before.

His eyes are hollowed cups of stolen suns,
His voice the creak of branches load-snow-bowed—
“I almost caught it—how the moment runs!
Stay, friend, and help me chase what time devoured.”

They say the woods grow richer with each guest—
Their years like sap tapped slow by thirsty roots—
While in the clearing where no birds make nest,
A canvas rots with unripe, forbidden fruits.

The letter waits for hands not yet undone,
Its warning fading into pulp and vein—
Another painter comes, sees setting sun,
And thinks, “I’ll make the darkness breathe again.”