Overlooked

I hear there is more
    old growth forest left in Massachusetts
    than they thought.

In narrow bands,
    too high for logging,
    too low to clear for skiing,
        they stand in the mountains
            like they always have
                because no one had a use
                    for the place they lived.

And I want to look
    behind a person’s eyes,
        to the ruined landscape,
                to the left-over places
                of their minds
            just to see what
                is still growing there,
                    undisturbed
                        by the turbulence
                            of oppression.

Those places that went un-noticed
    by society,
    the places they forgot were there.


-Jim DuBois
January 20, 1999