“Something Quieter” by Erin Block

If you sit all day

in the woods

you become something 

older and wiser

than time,

sticking out his neck 

to caw blessings or curses

but you can’t catch either 

on your tongue—

they fall so fast like spring snow, 

like disillusions do at age twenty.

If you sit all day

in the woods

you become the nothing 

you find there—

breath to bones 

to brash beating turkey wings

flying downhill at dawn.

If you sit all day

in the woods

you become something quieter

than a mother, 

like the birdsong 

you hear less and less of

each year

as you wait for another sunrise. 

About Erin Block
She/Her/Hers

Erin Block works as a librarian and lives in a cabin in Colorado where she hunts, fishes, forages, and gardens. Her writing has been published in CutBank Literary Journal, The Rumpus, Guernica and Gray's Sporting Journal, among others.