Even So
Even So
My friend wants to be
a tree that’s blazing out its autumn
so when it’s done,
its reds and golds, oranges and browns –
lie sudden all around.
Outside, chill wind.
Trees beyond the strip-mall –
bare and thin.
I pass a huge, unbalanced ginkgo,
leftward branches absent
from a winter storm,
then grasp the frost-tinged handrail
of my front porch steps.
And climb.
The locusts on our street
are gnarled city trees,
feeble from long decades of exhaust.
Even so,
a shapeliness.
Richard St. John is the author of The Pure Inconstancy of Grace (published by Truman State University Press, in 2005, as first runner-up for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry), Each Perfected Name (TSUP, 2015), and Shrine (a long poem released as a chapbook, 2011). His newest collection, Book of Entangled Souls is forthcoming from Broadstone Books (summer 2022). For information, please visit: http://richardstjohnpoet.com
