The Sunday Poem: Jungle Book, Part I

I.
The Road

The jungle breathes
with its own rhythms
for its own reasons.

The road is a knife cut
parting the jungle
and no use can claim it
from its source.

Ghosts jabber among the thick-veined leaves
Panthers dream of standing over campfires
Jowls sag over flames and sparks

This road is a gullet
into some animal too vast
to comprehend.