Why not to sleep in a bamboo forest?

-Dan Gualtieri

Because to sleep
in a bamboo forest
is to risk entrapment
and puncture, to shut
your eyes and awaken
in a prison of ribbed green,
or to wake enmeshed,
riddled with new growth.
It is easy to become
complacent in the face
of the natural world,
but to treat the bamboo
with insufficient caution
is to pretend that all
growth is slow, to neglect
a predator which is
stationary, but lethal
nonetheless.

Because the bamboo
is waiting for you.