After the storm…
…something insists I fill the space
with words
an epitaph a eulogy
for death
has spread a table
in my yard mauled
the magnolia left beaten
branches bent in disregarded
prayer needing only
a handful more of days
to have shed
its leaves but the sky bled
October
snow
defiled the pine
mangled the weeping cherry left
the larch in tatters everything
that mattered in the wealth
of summer
spent…
…after the storm
up and down
the road the chain saw
squeals the way is littered with
what was
summer’s robes autumn’s
hope of glory
a gory battlefield fodder
for a winter
flame…
It is not philosophy I seek but
question
with whose voice
the spring will speak and whisper
of a tempered wind and what becomes
of summer’s song with only empty
space where trees belong will only
silence greet
the dawn…
…after the storm?
-Susan A. Katz
November 13, 2011
(And in response…)
solace
-seeking it, after the storm (CT; October, 2011)
mangled limbs and
battered boughs would
seem to denigrate all vows and leave
us where all trust is
spent on antecedents of
Lament.
for we are wont to
gaze on high at figurines
of branch on sky-
now broken, martyred
torn asunder.
Solace? lies not
up, but under.
where humble roots hug
humbler dirt-
in vacant spaces trees
once stood
no such embrace,
there is no wood.
Deplore the scene of waste
and spoil; but at its
feet some comfort lies interred.
But for the fall
of former
trees from grace, a want
of soil may be inferred.
-fin
11/14/11
DLK