Wayne County Ohio is wearing farmer’s perfume. It smells of the manure that is thinly spread across the corn and soybean fields. The stench encroaches the edge of Johnson’s woods, a wooden space that is an anomaly amidst domestic plants ready for harvest.
The sights here consist of a different mixture of plants compared to those growing at the border. They consist of shady oaks, maples and beeches that color the air in a mosaic of green and black. Their trunks are huddled together, unlike the lonely walnut trees that are planted around the parking lot. Even the animals here are varied. Instead of cattle, the grazing creatures here are swarms of chipmunks and a few squirrels. The ancestors of these lively rodents likely planted the trees above, now serving as shields from the hawks patrolling the surrounding fields. All of these giants likely began as forgotten acorns, but they now imprint themselves as memories in the minds of visiting mothers and their children.
What hooks my eye most is the orange Jewelweed. The thumb-sized flowers look like schools of goldfish suspended in dim light. Perhaps it is not a mosaic the trees make, but an ocean of petals that have blossomed into fish. This sea of scenery seems tainted though, for the metal silos and machines beyond this refuge sail menacingly into my thoughts. Johnson’s Woods is only a preservation of the world as it was, a tiny pond in troubled water.
Hi! I love that you used scent as well as sight. It created a vivid image in my head. The metaphor of the woods as the ocean was very well thought out and was really beautiful. I also really liked that you created details inside the metaphor, such as how the petals “blossomed into fish”, it really brought the images of the forest and ocean together.