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.
