forest
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A Venerable Tree
I realized I hadn’t been to see the old growth oaks along Bayou Metairie in the lawn-like front of the park. miss those venerable trees, a few of whom are special to me, so I went walking today in the forest arboretum looking for a venerable tree. There are some grand ones and not just… Continue reading
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Remember Me
I want to make a good impressionon the earth this forest to remember me like birdsong in the rain when all the rest of me is burnt bonemy life laid out at last (no cut flowersplease) at the Goodwill Store. Continue reading
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consider yourself a ghost
You got to be a spirit. Don’t be no ghost — Rastaman the Griot consider yourself a ghost alone in the woods without other people television phone internetwhile life of all kinds continuesaround you in green and brownblossom color and bird song assomething from a dream this dream see your self as spirit in a… Continue reading
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Forest Thoughts
Is it my imagination or am I simply growing more perceptive the longer I walk in the forest? It seems the overcast filtered light spreads a Pantone rainbow of greens of the sort I’ve only seen in photos of the Northwest, and once in the Portland Japanese Garden in a drizzle. The soft scent… Continue reading
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DON’T BLINK
I was doing well in remission with minimal meds until the current circus of the damned rolled over town. I had my own imps to deal with they were mostly under control doing very well thanks for voting for hell. Continue reading
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Shinrin-Yoku (Forest Bathing)
Ten years ago, just as medication was beginning to rein in my outrageous and dangerous bipolar mania, I quit a job that almost broke me and fled into the park. Continue reading
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Not Drunk Unless
Not drunk unless on leafbreath and godswink, my path doesn’t stagger; it wanders with care, following some loose rules about how I pass by, under the boughs of and around certain trees, usually widdershins, compassing the roots and boles and others bowing for a benediction where the arch of branches buttress the sky. The Crow… Continue reading
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Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you.If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.No two… Continue reading
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The One Who Vanished into Silence
My first wake-up-to-anxiety attack in more than a month, since I started changing medications to get the hell off Prozac which aggravated my REM sleep disorder. Personal stress meets the Big Bastardly Bill, the realization as Independence Day approaches at the constitutional United States is now a failed state, that everything I was raised to… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 