Cut Branch by Sean Evans After trains antlered shadows give their ghosts to the pine. Whatever the deer taught me I’ve forgotten. How to lose the last skin of velvet in time for rut. I no longer hear the Rosewood and the Solingen braiding cut-mark in the green. Low always for balance, tempered by fire the grain won’t split; I was no boy scout. I needed a father outpacing the Cheyenne over a suicide butte, proud as any light of hoof in the white cloud of runaway Chevy. Nothing epic— straight bender, unholstered and loaded through one eye of Tequila worm—a start west anyhow. We never blamed you; just weathered the call, half-sober at least, and collect. I believed in lassos then. It couldn’t last, I know that. Each lope and hoof upon water must converge, linger long before a kitchen window at dusk, threading the latch, nightly, in time, always in time. 102 theMeadow
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