the fort in the woods

when i was a boy
my friends and i discovered a tree

of course
as is often the case
with places that contain more than
their fair share
of magic
this was no ordinary tree

you see
when
it had fallen
it had somehow
taken on the shape
of an equilateral triangle
with one vertex of the triangle
raised some ten feet above the ground
as it rested
its broken body
on one of its sister’s bodies

of course
the tree didn’t know that
and truth be known
neither did we

we called it our fort
and stole plywood sheets and bricks and nails
from a nearby construction site
to enclose the space
the tree had defined
as it fell to the earth
following
a long ago lightning strike

and when the fort
was more clearly defined
we took matches
from our parents

and made small fires there
and dreamed boy dreams
that were especially vivid
because we were in our fort in the woods

and when it rained
and we needed to survive
and we shared our rations
and we huddled
under a tarp stretched
taut with frayed ropes
we became lost
in the magic

in the possibilities
of the truth of the tree

and it was during one of these rainstorms
as we huddled closely together
that we saw
what we believed were viking runes
gently
even lovingly
carved into the body
of the trees exposed trunk

and so we allowed our dreams
to extend back into time unimaginable
redefining history
creating a story
that lives within each of us
to this very moment

(dave, steve, marty, robby   i miss you
and think of you constantly)