Walking in the Forest

Sophia Qin

Pretending to be free of worries

Doubting beginnings and endings

The sky I flew over is full of clouds

The city I landed in belongs to the Celts

I am only deeply fond Of the forest at the edge of the city

Carrying my name with me

Cubes with distinct edges collide, making a clanging sound

But the North American mole and the torch pine

Do not understand the language from the other side of the Earth

Wipe off the yellow dust from the surface of the square characters

Mix with rainwater and tears

Pour it on the land of the forest

The seeds have long been dormant

When will they break through the soil?

Straighten out the twenty-eight strokes one by one

Break off the beech branch Ignoring its smooth skin

Borrow the salty Latin letters Force them into shape

Twisting out a strange name

Pinecones paired with branches

Curves entwine with lines

Dreams confuse reality

Creating my new mask

I fall to the base of a tree

Staring at it face to face

A squirrel hops over

Clearly not eyeing the food on the ground It stares at me blankly

What is it really trying to tell me?

Countless times walking in this forest

Exchanging secrets with the pine trees

They are sharp enough

But seal their lips with wax, keeping silent

Sometimes chasing with the white-tailed deer

He suddenly sprints away

Leaving four hoof prints

Mocking me for missing two

Bluebells raise their purple little faces

Saying they can only love one person for life

And will never reveal

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Who that person really is

Sometimes the wild wind conspires with the blizzard

Hiding all the secrets of the forest I dig out the past from my chest ——Spread it out on the snow

Shouting at the forest Come, let’s compare

And see who is more void

The forest remains silent Bringing a leaf to my face

The leaf of the black oak is torn into seven pieces

Each crack sprouts sharp serrated teeth

Are these the generous weapons of fate

To resist time and nothingness?

Yet this is clearly a conspiracy

The black oak’s life is only a mere hundred years

EpilogueWhen I first arrived in the United States, my favorite place was the forest on the edge of Laizhen city. At that time, according to local custom, I took an English name. New friends, students of different ages and races at the language school, members of the PTA at my child’s school, all got used to calling me by my English name. However, when I walked alone in the forest, I often asked myself: Who is Sophia? My son’s favorite cartoon when he was young was “Ice Age”. I watched it with him over and over again, and I was deeply impressed by the pinecone that appeared at the beginning of the film. That autumn, while running in the forest, something hard underfoot stopped me. I squatted down to check and found it was that long-lost pinecone. My surprise was like meeting an old friend in a foreign land, but I quickly laughed at myself: This is indeed my foreign land, but for the pinecone, it is its homeland. Meeting an old friend in a foreign place, how could I not be interested in its past and present? After some searching, I found out: Its mother tree’s English name is black oak, and its Chinese name is 黑栎树 (black oak). Oak is just oak, though black oak belongs to the beech family, translating its English name directly as 黑橡树 (black oak) is also acceptable. In short, this fruit can be called an acorn, but it shouldn’t be called a pinecone. I toyed with that “pinecone”, looking up at the black oak, seeing how it soared into the clouds, thinking it should live as long as the ginkgo trees in my homeland, for thousands of years. However, despite the black oak reaching thirty meters tall, its lifespan is like that of humans, only a mere hundred years. The world is indeed absurd: what you see may not be the truth; what you call may not be the true name; and what you think may be entirely wrong. Many things in this world are merely misnomers passed on from one to another.