Scholastic Award Winner: Murmurs of a Forgotten Forest

Murmurs of a Forgotten Forest

Gold Key in Poetry

By Calvin
Grade 9

The dated debut of dawn’s first flight,
Stretched shadows confide keys to the night.
A woodland stirs, its breath a silent sigh,
Waking dreams as stars bid their byes.

In dawn’s serenity, where silhouettes stay,
A thicket breathes falsely of a former day.
Lemon licked leaves, a dew-pecked delight.
Waltz within the forenoon’s light.

Below the ancient awning, time ticks still,
Echoes of glee, lives lived with will.
A drapery decorated with grains of gold,
brave stories of the bound, the big, and the bold.

The birches buzz of battles fought;
Of insight gained and lectures taught.
Their roots fall deep, through soil and pores;
Withering away, denatured to their cores.

But now the wind whispers a somber song,
once there was life, but something went wrong.
A craggy thorn, a charred stump.
The bushes narrow with every dump.

The densest regions of dark green left unbound,
merely lingers as spoiling debris above the ground.
Ashes rain, and the channel chokes,
With soot-streaked skies and poisoned oaths.

Moss carpets the earth, a verdant olive bed,
Now smeared with shadows, a dismal dread.
Footprints of creatures, big and small,
Drown in the silence of a rumbling crawl.

The sunshine filters forward in fronds so grand,
Yet marred now by a scorched, shriveled hand.
The woodland weeps, and the air turns cold,
For what was sacred, now bought and sold.

In twilight’s stillness, when the sun sees night,
The forest glows with a glimmering light.
The fireflies flicker, but their warmth is weak.
Lost to the contaminants that conquer the creek.

Listen closely, for the forest spoke,
Its voice now stifled, only a choked croak.
Once ancient, wise, and free,
Now echoes humanity’s cruelty.

So tread softly, but not in grace,
For what you’ve done has scarred this place.
The trees once confided, it once called to you,
But you silenced it, so the forest fell too.