Negative One

Shriek of a windstorm
sends the jacaranda

scraping against
the fence out back.

With every gust
the flesh of the trunk is gouged,

sliced in the shape of
an axillary scar.

We wait until dusk
and then, cruel as heroics,

we fetch the lopper
from the shed,

extend its arm to grip
the offending branch,

metal jaw biting through
bark and pith.

The limb drops,
a negative progression,

the way we counted surgeries
in a year of bad weather.
 

ξ

Mary Peelen is the author of QUANTUM HERESIES (Glass Lyre Press 2019). Her poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Daily, Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.