Maverick Poet Award WINNER: “One Night, Long ago, My Mother Took Me Into the Woods to Lose Me” by MK Chavez

MK Chavez is an Afro-Latinx writer, educator, and multi-disciplinary artist. Chavez's writing explores identity, social justice, environmental reclamation, horror cinema, magic, and ritual. Chavez’s literary offerings include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found among the trees in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park through the Voices of the Trees Project.

Chavez’s poem One Night, Long ago, My Mother Took Me Into the Woods to Lose Me is a love letter to wilderness and all the living beings within her who save us every day.

One Night, Long ago, My Mother Took Me Into the Woods to Lose Me

By MK Chavez

As a child, I understood languishing & old growth. At twilight 

my tenderness opened to a path between the trees— space 

between the sugar pines.

I knew how trees could be cut into logs and stacked.

What it meant to wait to be turned into something of use.

I was seven when my mother took my hand, said nothing 

and walked us from the campground into the backcountry.

Tree roots have nerve endings.

Trees grow in familial patterns and message warnings 

so that others might save themselves.

I understand what it is to be at the center of a terrible mistake. 

I know what it is to lose everything.

My mother lost her mind in 1982.

That’s what they said.

Lost.

Like keys, a wallet, a pair of glasses.

Women in Mexico are marrying trees. My mother was a marrying type.

My mother said, you will be safer among the trees.

I have never married a human, but I would marry a tree.

Sometimes, trees swallow war.

Along the path you may come across a tree that has folded an object into itself because a tree cannot deny what life has placed in its path.

There are trees I will never see again.

I never saw my mother again after the night she took me into the forest.

I understand that there are some faces that I may never see again

and that we self-impose our own demise.

Every forest has a tongue.

Each tree a unique murmur.

I imagine the mountain hemlock listening to my mother on that blessed night.

I may search for one particular tree,

ask it to tell me the secrets of the time we spent together.

I want to say to every tree,

You are more than a resource.

Meanwhile, the forest is a metaphorical state. The only home I’ve ever known