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    Home › Article › Even So

    Even So

    by Richard St. John
    2022 Winter
    Photo Credit: WikiMedia Johann Jaritz
    December 13, 2021

    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.

    Categories: PQ Poem
    Tags:
    Richard St. John

    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

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