The Forest Without Song

The Forest Without Song
Robert Shmigelsky

In the forest caught in
the grip of a dimensional rift
tall and narrow
and evenly spaced
chestnut trees,
wearing their bushy green crowns,
ran in sequence into the distance
left, right and before you:
their boughs coming together
at the ends to form
forest halls.

Songbirds sang their tunes,
but their voices were not heard.
The calls for mates were not made.
Thieves and woodsmen, travelling through,
signaled and gestured in the language of signs.

Having miss stepped
stepping out of
fabric depths,
their ancestors--
shadow travelers
called rangers--
stretched forest bounds
into boundlessness
and--
a piece of themselves, future descendants
and all forest creatures
caught and left behind in
unmeasured depths not easily traversed--
took their voices away,
and perhaps more,
leaving
the forest caught in
the grip of a dimensional rift
as the Forest Without Song.

* * *

Robert Shmigelsky, a residential care aide, is unapologetic in his pursuit of excellent high fantasy. Robert has been writing fantasy for himself in his spare time for the last seven years, but has only recently begun writing for others. Besides reading and writing, some of his hobbies include computers and medieval and ancient history. He has a dry sense of humor, which he blames his stepfather for. Also, he has a habit of making history jokes no one but he understands.

Robert has an upcoming "dragon knight apprentice" short fiction series due to be published this June at Yesteryear Fiction and is currently sifting through the first of three novels he wrote in his younger years in an attempt to make it somewhat palatable.

What advice do you have for other fantasy writers?

If it has already been done before -- don't do it, or at the very least try to put a new twist to it.