1. highway seven
In the hills, a mountain
fog: each house consumed
despite all anxious light,
and ghosts too soon.
The car ensures the road
beneath—a drive both dream
and ritual: exit right,
three lights, twenty-seven
miles before the turn.
The last match crumbles
cold against the box—its
smoke would last forever.
Between rains, some dogs
beside the road: a cloud
of orphans—delinquent notice
to feed the withering gods.
2. the death of the impatient tree
or: a seasonal poem
or: a poem written in the voice of a seventh-grade literature textbook
The death of the impatient tree,
who thought each sun was spring,
the forest all considered strange—
though hardly a surprise.
“He trembled,” said the oak,
“for every landing bird.
As if each winter rest would bring
an hour more of sun.”
“And hoped in every leaping fish,”
returned the nearest pine,
“an oracle of thaw, so thirst
more than ice would give.”
“So fully did each season love,”
joined his mistress birch,
“that hardly could he sleep,
nor hardly wake, in such
“Uncertain times as winter fades
to spring. We could sit
more calm in ambiguity;
an early bloom, a late
snow were such a mystery
that hardly do I doubt
he worried through more vital truths
than any our roots could tell.”
Throughout the spring, as Nature’s hand
distributed their friend,
each considered quietly
and with different claim:
whether the impatient tree
had rings so tightly wound
as to approach infinity,
or whether he had none.
