The Growth of Grave

There's anger in the evergreens!

Trunks rooted in wrath, rite deafening;

nothing fallen dare scream,

or met with violent, vibrant dream.

The winds whine both grievance and grime;

gloomy boughs groan barren the blows:

Doomed dahlias with thorns overgrown.

Better blind in eternal night than to have sight therein:

Darkness unsettles even stinging nettles;

the sun never bathed these leaves.

And evil loves the shadows.

Monsters...

Heh.

Figures.

Damned nonetheless the eroded who enter:

Needn't a noose provide shrine;

either disfigured by mind or vine,

they strangle the same.

I-

ah...

Ay.

There's anger in the evergreens.

**

Note from the author; Title Change:

I wrote this poem as part of an anthology; in the story, the speaker is warning passer-by’s not to enter a haunted forest. To me, it’s a way to express living in a small town as a victim of assault.

Upon entering it in the homecoming competition, part of the process was to give it a title (that it didn’t originally have, as it was written and intended to fall under the title of the anthology as a whole). Without any consideration, and wanting to find a relative title that included evergreens as well as home; I picked the name of a local trail; The Seven Sisters Trail.

The Seven Sisters Trail is on the ancestral land of the Coast Salish, S’ólh Téméxw and Nuxwsa'7aq. This is not my culture, I know nothing of the significance of the trail to Indigenous communities; entitling my poem after the trail appropriated their history, taking it to fit my fictitious story. What’s more is because the poem is about a haunted forest, the title gave undertones and added a narrative that Indigenous lands are evil or dangerous.

My reason for the title is unjust and based off ignorance and lack of self education. Even the field trip reason brings light to my lack of understanding of colonialism; those field trips are part of the colonialism that is to blame for The Seven Sisters and many like it to be losing their trees.

And at the bottom line; when you look up Seven Sisters, you shouldn’t see a poem written by a white girl.

It is for this reason that I’d like to place this apology here for having chosen that as my title. Had I done my research, I would have been able to avoid this.