#ncspring

Cut a foot into a century tree and find a maggot who beat me there.Like a shook soda, black ants pour a fountain out of another cut.Cut the whole tree down and a twig of a limb throws off my chain.It’s not a dogwood, but the bark has a bite. We’re both bleeding from the wrists.I knew the risks. The tree, I’m not so sure. A white oak cherry poplar surprise.Sourwood, sweetgum, sassafras, sick of…

The past few days

The things I have done have climbed inside my hands. Used engine oil. Black grease spiraled out an iron jack. Dad swears it once held up the entire house. A touch of rash off a three leaved brat like a bracelet decorating my wrist. Inch long scar from a bowsaw when I was too young to have had one. White lightning sunk into my right pointer knuckle from a kitchen knife I’d forgotten I’d put in the…

Scruffy looking if you can call it a tree line. Little gnarly oaks that only grow where the ground is burned every other year, or so. Or sew spanish moss like tassels off proud bowing tree limbs. Or sew on button nosed pine cones pitted in pockets of so much sand. Like fleas if you let them get bad. Like trees after too many fires, and how they come back. More and smaller and shorter and scruffy.…