Clearcut
Such rough green sorrows,
trees
laid down, crumpled
and split. No loud amens
to solemnize. Crack
in a forest, echoes sucked away,
river sighs remain.
Hard men of brute muscle
leveling, sweat scrolling, food
on the table, as though blessings.
After the cut, yellowed air,
a choke
of particles, of sour wings,
logs piled on trucks that shudder
over mudded roads
to flee down highways
past moss-swept boulders and stumps
that sit like rotting teeth
across the hills
where wind gathers speed, unimpeded.
* * * * *
My Dead Husband’s Birthday
The waters are rising. The trees collude
with the wind to arc and bend. A smear
of swifts pushes off to the north.
I’ve built a stone chambered cairn
where I can buffer the worst of grief.
Most days it stands firm, glinting in
muffled light or winking rain.
But cairns have chinks. Things get in.
Today the sky is muddled and the air,
woolen-thick. The troubled world
goes on with or without.
Time is a stumble and when I count
the years he’s been gone, it’s a puzzle,
and the tracery of my life lacks a center.
I’m growing old alone. I circle myself,
days falling out of the frame, tug
at the loose threads of my old green sweater,
the slow unraveling.
* * * * *
Heartbeats in a Pandemic
I’m a remark,
a sedimentary layer,
the pause of a canoe paddle,
a polite refusal.
The weeks go on as I dutifully gaze
from the window, waiting for birds.
Any bird is welcome during the day,
days to follow, blues among gray.
I’m a comma,
the fall away petals,
a signature in dust,
cloth remnants.
I make no plans, the obvious
settling in my bones, the dark
and light, dark and light, a need
to scream tucked in a pocket.
Each of Lawry’s images is worth lingering over: “a smear/of swifts,” “rough green sorrows.” “Heartbeats” perfectly captures our individual insignificance, sense of waiting, and tension during this time.