Woods Don’t Exist to Explain the Woods

Symbols connect to symbols
And, if they make maps, they may
Fit, here and there, to the world.

Numerical symbols do
This the best, their connections
Seeming to speak for the world,

The language of the cosmos,
But numbers aren’t saying that.
The numbers don’t claim themselves

To be a language. Language
Claims them. The numbers predict,
And make the most useful maps,

But they have blind alleyways
Where the connecting symbols
End at dumpsters and brick walls.

Symbols connect to symbols.
Stories, omens, equations,
And other symbolic quirks,

The creatures of their forests,
Can be followed down their trails.
You are the tracks of their trails.