^{for David Lieberman}

Every summer my neighbor 
with a hard hat, heart, and hide 
trundles out his hippo Harley 
to go hissing out on a fat hot breeze

He doesn’t know it 
(or does he?) 
but that is how pain 
wheels itself out

seasonal

It is real 
It is recurrent 
It is a reminder of the flaw 
built into the machine to preserve perfection

If we could delve into the granular caves 
of the asphalt his wheels wheeze on 
we might see in the crepuscular cracks

a twisty little thing we call sorrow

stretching its centimal length

knowing it owns the world

Rose Rosette Disease
is a death sentence for roses.

Unlucky plants must be pulled
root and all

lest the virus spread to neighbors.
Those afflicted

look straight outta Mordor—
stems dense with evil

spikes, stunted buds,
leaves curled tight

like parsley. But, lo,
fret not. Carly arrives

bearing hope:
the internet believes

these angry thorns
on our Moonlight Romantica

are merely coltish growth.
Lay down your shovel, Todd.

Hide your shears.
It’s so easy to be afraid

when a thing is new—
the beak of a day-old chick

held to water pan,
the back of a hand

held to baby boy’s breath.
Or strange new moles.

It can be difficult to see
the dermatologist.

Even an older man’s life
can be new at times.

Moonlight Romantica—
fifty-some pale yellow petals

rolled up in a meaty bloom.
The rose catalog tells me

the fragrance will be sweet.

^{Trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.
—Herman Hesse}

When the railroad first came to the edge of the mountain, 
men in buckskin breeches called it the “gravity road.” 
They pounded on solid rock from dawn to dusk, dangled 
off cliff faces in woven reed baskets to drive steel spikes 
into stone with a primal, accentual, hand-hammered beat. 

When the railroad first arrived at the sedge edge of prairie, 
bison were picked off from their herds, sometimes to cure 
into hams, skin for coats, or cull for bones to ship east 
and market as fertilizer, glue, plates or umbrellas handles; 
other times, they were shot just to rot where they dropped. 

When the railroad first built a station on the city outskirts, 
families gathered on hillsides to watch black smoke plume, 
hitched horses and abandoned stagecoaches to whisper 
about “Pullman Palace Cars” with velvet seats, brass rails, 
gas lights, knuckle couplers, air brakes: five stars for a fee. 

When the railroad first threatened the forest’s tree line, 
shackled men with skin dark as bark and forced to work 
in quarries and mines began to hack at stumps in hummus 
with shovels. They left their lives in leaf fall and the roots 
regenerated. Unlike us, forests grow slow, in no time zone. 

When the railroad first swam into the camera’s viewfinder, 
no train had used its timber ties for a span only the rings 
of a tree might tell (but won’t). Listen closely to the trunk:  
when our hurtling headlong is blocked, we need to change 
not just direction but dimension. Decelerate. Look up.