Poetry

TREE TRIMMING

by Walter Boswell
02/01/19
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Tree Trimming

If wholeheartedness cannot find some measure of thee

                                in a breath of drunken human dignity,

                then it is best left for self to die

                                                                in a sanctum free.

If the carving out of soul cannot bring

                                some substance to my mass,

                then it is well      not ever to know        a heaven,

                                well not ever to be remembered on earth.

Although I fashion myself a sorrow made,

                                someone the worthwhile to read,

                the consuming stanzas fall short their consummated meanings,

                                                                as injured in my hand;

                and I know whose works are dry and wicked,

having returned from their scattered showers only …

                only the spiritual wind which blows all wetness away:

                                a gust befitting,

                                in the sewing of funeral cloth,

                for a dying man to converse erelong              with a dying race;

whose uttered beat strikes not the sound of honest wood

                in a forest of fallen timbers.

Lessons of the Farm

                Make supplication to Heaven to send you a Judge,

to let the enemies all around your Israelite soul

                                fear the true God for whom you serve.

Pray to the Lord to relieve you of this stumbling block,

                lift from you this thorn within your flesh;

then turn to your evil ways once the danger has expired,

                                the episodic stone has passed.

Instead of learning from your isolation and freezer punishment,

                aspiring to a higher expectancy of mind,

                your spiritual advance comes only in the offing,

                                in the spurning of your Messiah.

Fertile seeds are wasted, young plants left uncured,

                by your early, lustful desire to reap

                                (what you have not fully treated):

                leaving little shoots and unripen shells of fruit

                from your shortened rendering of the harvest season.

Plant in the spring, nourish in the summer, harvest in autumn –

                                                spend no winter starving.

No Deposit

An ounce until midnight,

a second short a ton –

whose squinting eyes and beleaguered heart

once measured infinities in your span.

An eve to an ending,

a party to a wake –

where heaven’s rainbows drain color-bound

in the lifeless recall of product man.

Dr. Walter Boswell

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