God of the Wood Poem by Jamaal May

The air in this world is thicker than I remember
from nights at camp, whacking fireflies with a fallen branch.
I wondered if the shadows, numbering in the hundreds, were all cast
by the same god I hung out with when I was little—his voice
is the silence I've been afraid to hear since.
I would smack the side of a tree and stand in the rust-red
shower of leaves until I felt stronger than god;
I could've cracked his moon in half
if I wanted to—if I swung my stick high and hard enough,
if I screamed loud enough. But I'm afraid
to know what happens when enough
is the sound of my staff splintering against heaven,
a shock up my arm—
more with every strike.
No gods, still, though
I broke away from the campfire and its songs
so I could kneel in the woods, let wild grass grow
to meet my damp knees. To kneel with a question and rise
with a question is only one way to forget
your old prayers. Another is to busy your hands with sticks
carving your runes into a clearing's mud. I learned dead trees
could be pushed over by my small hands
if the rot was enough and I had leverage.
They creaked, cracked, and tumbled
down towards—
I don't know where;
my eyes couldn't follow that far in the dark.
I pretended there was another camp at the bottom
where they worshiped a god of wood and sap, and nightly,
when I snuck from my tent, I responded to their prayers with a sign,
this very wood crashing down around them.