a golden shovel after Kobayashi Issa
One after another, each massive tree
seems to explode from within, each trunk to
get torqued by a giant hand, to be
destroyed, splintered. Hundred-year-old oaks and elms felled
by microbursts, lightning explosions; the
canopied town altered. A bird
we see the next day, as we survey damage, is unaware
its chosen oak is slated for removal. It builds
again, as perhaps we all do after disaster, its
twigs and strings shaping a new nest.
Cathy Barber’s poetry is published widely including in anthologies Rewilding: Poems for the Environment and Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, and has been nominated Best of the Net. She is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program Chapbook is Aardvarks, Bloodhounds, Catfish, Dingoes (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). www.cathybarber.com
