Forbes and Martha

By SARAH CARSON

Genessee County, Michigan

On the night hike through what Wikipedia calls the picturesque 383-acres of the For-Mar Nature Preserve and Arboretum, a man in ISO rated cold-weather cargo pants plays barred owl calls from YouTube, then recruits a kid with a headlamp to hold a Bluetooth speaker to a dogwood tree. I imagine the owls shake their heads in their hollow, that somewhere else in the dark of fallen branches, salamanders yawn, a doe wishes her fawn would settle.

Behind a hoop house where earlier in the day schoolchildren toppled sun-grown sprigs of coriander, beetroot, the moon checks her dimples, side-eyes whoever marked bends in hillsides as if they needed marking, as if all of this was not here for millions of years without us, won’t be here for millions more after we leave. Now in the dark of bur oak, black tupelo, my friend has left the path to relieve herself. Meanwhile I am lighting a tangle of Virginia creeper with a cell phone, watching for the kind of dangers I’ve seen in pencil sketches on television, so sure every rustle in the distance is existential, and maybe it’s in this that a human is like every other animal in a forest of uncountable creatures, even if I’m the one with the flashlight, even if I’m the one with the map. Wikipedia says that when before Forbes and Martha used this land to raise prize-winning heifers, the relatively flat expanses, cool pools of fresh water made for excellent grazing. Where ice shaved the land smooth, they call the deposits left behind erratic. Now in the meadow a stinkbug floats, a clump of loam crumbles, a whirlybird splits open on a spit of ryegrass, prepares to outlive us. Wikipedia does not say what happens next, what new kind of wonder will replace us. What’s to be scared of in a world without ending? It’s those of us who don’t get to stay, that is, who want answers. As if fear is a kind of desire, the most desperate kind of want. 

Sarah Carson is the author of several poetry collections, including How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan, winner of the 2021 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books. She is currently at work on a memoir about single motherhood, work, and the rules that govern the universe. You can read more of her work at stuffsarahwrote.com