The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
Waldeinsamkeit

There is a place I was once unaccustomed to visit
as magical as frightful and overwhelming to the open
I passed through in a bubble of my own conceit
but at least I could smell a new air

In my youth I wandered lustily to escape my bounds
chopping down the underbrush that tickled my fancy
breaking cartoon-shaped branches 
as I kicked over the tease of mushrooms

As I matured, my visits took on a sylvan elegance
as I admired the blades of fir amidst the chanterelles
a secret hideaway where nobody and everybody had been
and I picked up my empty water bottle to leave

Those days I was one to worship and imbue the natural
with celestial spirit to explain the wonder
but time ground away the unnecessary and revealed 
a bas-tableau behind the concrete curtain

So stirred my heart in gusts of romantic adoration
no fuller could I fill my lungs my heart
So endured the etchings of burlwood across 
my unscarred countenance and left my fingers asplinter

But as age passes by and the mind grows weary of the catalog
among the forest awander and away, the brightness of
lemon-pine camphor invigorates a deeper inhalation
blind tidal ebb swallowing chasms and arid peaks into
the lush and dewy mulm of flaking though fallen logs

Here may I release my last breath among the 
constellations of fairies, the dank cold pulling back
my soul-veil like a candle whose wax has waned
for to enter here, I had shed my trappings and familial duty
laid down my passions by this bed and burial mound
and let the stars dawn upon me amidst the sylvan ocean sound.
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