THE FOREST

Seeming isn’t something
this city will
relinquish lightly
as a morass
of birdsong fills in
and the darkening column
of day wage parts
to reveal its coarse staccato
heart has shred
like bowstrings to trail
dutifully behind in a red fringe
I imagine Napoleon’s horse
whose left hoof became
some rich fucker’s snuffbox
You always preferred the hospitality
of forest people
but what is a city except
a forest made of people
And when it’s spring the colors
of our leaves spar
with the bare and simple
skin of limbs
until the squirrels that are our
hands wind up everything
to a frenzied pitch
A frenzied pitch made of apples