The Red Maple (first draft)

You’re green now, tree,

you’re green, and leaves

will cover your wound;

that broken branch will fall

eventually, storm-slashed

off, now strung upside down,

hooked onto a sibling

adjacent sturdy limb.

Just as we, too, deep now

in this bright darkling wood,

dispute the selva oscura to be

and the future fractal fall.

April 15, 2022

A subsequent version of this poem was published in the New English Review in June 2022.