by Gerald Friedman
Stability
Every road a scar
on the globe’s mottled hide
every footpath, boulevard, interstate
an underscore of our mobility
a license to shuttle somewhere else
for food, or a day job,
or to flee from our enemies
unlike that towering bulk of a pine tree
at the foot of the orchard
solemn in its vow of stability
rooted to this slant of hillside
for a couple of centuries.
My neighbor points out
if you took that tree down
you’d have a better view
and we could summon men
with chainsaws and a skidder
to dismember its stature, haul away
long prone columns, a flatbed
procession winding down the road
to a mill where the air is dappled
with sawdust and machine oil
to be processed into useful things.
But on a tentative spring morning
where the sun angles in
just this side of a frost
where apple buds are tensing up
testing the air for the moment
to make their break, I believe
we’ll stay moored right here.
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Carve, RHINO, Rust + Moth, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont, USA. http://www.robbiegamble.com.
Gerald Friedman teaches physics and math in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. His poetry has appeared in various journals, and his photographs and photo-poetry hybrids have appeared in Santa Fe Literary Review, DailyHaiga, and contemporary haibun online. You can see some of his writing at https://jerryfriedman.wixsite.com/my-site-2 and more photographs at Flickr.