Steven Carter

Invisible Bird Singing

In the middle of this small clearing, suddenly an odor of perfume! Who was here? Who could’ve been here? So far as I know, these woods are deserted—except for a yearling black bear ambling through here last week.

I imagine myself a visitor to a “Goldilocks” planet hundreds of light-years away: like earth not too hot, not too cold. Now, as I admire its necklace of greenish-silver moons under a double star, wafts that odor of perfume.

The fragrance changes everything, causing me to feel not simply otherworldly, but enchanted.

No, no, these woods themselves are enchanted. And so, bending on one knee I turn a fallen fern-frond over.

What disappears –
part of me,
part of all of us

summer solstice
mystery
of one dead leaf