Coffin Tree
       

Somewhere in the national forest,
there is a coffin tree for each of us,
chosen at birth, containing us
completely, even in its youngest seedling.
If we keep no one left to love, to love us,
to cut it down, to afford it carved
to order, we will wander the flower bridge,
the light-rail route, the geopark trails,
unclean ghosts the clouded blue
of our deepening cataracts.
What’s left of us, children moved to city,
smudged air of our once bodies,
is holding, exhausted, the village
brinkline of trees from the road.
We disappearing as the mist that beads
our shapes burns off at dawn.
There is a difference between fire
shaped like a horse and a horse made of fire.

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Copyright © 2011 Adam Fell All rights reserved
from I Am Not a Pioneer
H_NGM_N BKS
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission