Black Water Beneath The Pines

Verse 1At dusk I push from reeds and stone, The shore falls back; I row alone. The firs lean dark against the sky, While one last ember fades on high. Verse 2The oar slips softly through the night, Then folds the stars in broken light. No window burns, no pathway shines, On black water between the pines. Verse 3An ancient track runs down the hill, Then disappears where ferns grow still. A rusted ring beneath the moss Remains where men once hauled across. Verse 4The kilns are cold, the fires are gone, The earth has covered every scar. Yet smoke still clings to root and stone, Where old roads vanish through the pines. Verse 5I hear a sound beyond the bay, Too low for bird, too far to say. It moves across the sleeping lake, A name the silence cannot break. Verse 6Black hands once washed along this shore, While lamps burned late beside the door. Some crossed the ice and reached the light, Some never came back home that night. BridgeNo wind moves through the leaning trees, No wing disturbs the waiting reeds. Yet circles widen near the bow, Where nothing walks above or below. A lantern glows beneath the wave, Still burning for the lost and brave. Then from the dark, a whisper rises: “The forest keeps what man denies.” Verse 7I see them now in ash and rain, The charcoal men, the hands of flame. Their voices drift through flooded mines, Then cross the water through the pines. Verse 8And when my own last fire is low, And no one speaks the name I know, May some small echo still remain, Among the roots, beneath the rain. OutroThe iron sleeps, the forest grows, The water keeps what no one knows. And every lost and weathered sign Lies in black water between the pines.