The Messianic Forest In The Northeast Poem by Karl Carpenter

When northern earth begins to shun the sun,
the leaves shred off and shrivel- each like a corpse,
and trunks left naked like standing skeletons,
a cemetery for summer, the Christian sort.

Quiet as graves save the crows' caws,
the ghosts of summer patrol the forest floor,
the bushes stick their branches out like claws,
the squirrels alone seem to move anymore.

It seems quite dead to those who do not know
that buds will bloom when spring takes over soon,
that woods are graveyards for three months in a row,
same as He laid three days in His Tomb.