Visitor

You walk past the salmonberries, the newly unfurling maidenhair fern; the false-lily-of-the-valley tucked darkly beneath the Indian plum. You talk over the robin’s song, and step through the bunches of wood sorrel, flattening their stems as you walk. You don’t get excited over a coltsfoot flower rising long-stalked above the understory. You don’t stop with me to kneel at the stream violets, bright green and yellow at a turn in the trail. You complain about the pollen. You see none of the life in front of you. You leave the forest never having been there at all.