Nude sky
What’s left on this good Friday, ten
pieces, thick, chair-like, dead pile at
edge of alley and street, because the
live tree did not fit the rectangles of
flat John’s backyard. Blues in the morning.
Watched out my kitchen window the
yellow-jacket spike her way up the
tree spiking the southern sky, green
pine winter, summer — each step a
minor insult — slicing small limbs with
chainsaw efficiency, ease, others
feeding the shorn into the chipster,
modern machinery of disintegration,
atomized live tree to ground cover.
Couldn’t watch the rest. Came back to
smell the aroma of those chair-like
pieces, their core exposed amid circle
years, slash fragrance.
At church, readings of the naked
tree after eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani.
A worrisome thing.
Instagram: @patrick.t.reardon
Twitter: @PatrickReardon
Editor’s Note: This poem effortlessly slips into and out of allegory until the last line slides sharply into the reader’s psyche like a nail to the heart.
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