Over A Rumbly Garden by Susan Tepper

                           for Micheál Gallagher

Don’t hack to bits

what’s barely  bark

left to the old tree

withered smoke colored

unconscious neglect

half-uprooted—

Bend close you’ll see 

a hollow

where the trunk pulls away

from the ground.

Shove your fist in.

Feel the bugs swarming.

That tree was fed by rain 

and rock soil

sucked in the sunlight and

fertilized by packed snow.

The seasons. 

It grew lonely.

Failed to propagate.

That old tree sticks out 

at the odd angle

over a rumbly garden.

Pivoting its long reach.

Susan Tepper is the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry. Her two most recent titles are CONFESS (poetry from Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019) that was shortlisted at American Book Fest. Other honors and awards include eighteen Pushcart Prize Nominations, a Pulitzer Nomination by Cervena Barva Press for the novel ‘What May Have Been’ (re-written for adaptation as a stage play to open in NY next year), shortlisted in Zoetrope Contest for the Novel (2003), NPR’s Selected Shorts for ‘Deer’ published in American Letters & Commentary (ed. Anna Rabinowitz), Second Place Winner in StorySouth Million Writers Award, Best of 17 Years of Vestal Review and more. Tepper is a native New Yorker. www.susantepper.com