and find ourselves unprepared
for sky’s grip on the white pine.
Handsaw. Shovel. Nylon rope
in my gloved hands. My father saws
an hour into heartwood before stopping,
breathless, to lean. I offer to take up the saw.
He refuses, he always refuses—he doesn’t trust
chance. So we break, he recounts a lifetime
of severed trunks: redbud, sycamore, a hemlock
that tried to crack his nine-year-old skull—

The tree still stands, my father won’t rest,
grips the resined handsaw in his right fist,
presses his will with his left, but it is the third
fist that strikes me, rapid flex in his barrel chest,
predictable, terrible, so when the pine finally yields

I am blind to the work, the guide rope rips
through my hands and between us the trunk
twists momentarily
unstoppable.

heed the rattler’s warning.
Listen for its tightly coiled rasp,

the burr, the catch, the purr
emptied of its chance of cat.

A brindled sound. Rapid slap. Hunting
once my uncle’s half-mutt appaloosa reared,

nostrils dilated, synapses flared, she struck
the gravel trail and, shrieking, thrashed

a gem-backed length of garden hose,
somebody’s trash. Passion may be blind—

truth hisses in the ear. Click of teeth. Snap
of sheets. Kitchen door just before it’s latched.