The two-trunked tree
does nothing in winter
but hold
its visual ground:
a patch of yard pressed
between the muted street and
roofs covered in snow
sloping
to a precipitous drop.
The fragrant green of pines
through a bare filligree
of flighty twigs
forms a contrast. Add
trenched umber trunks,
umbrageous undergrowth.
Add chimney smoke that writhes
in cold air and rhymes
its incomprehensible
verse with the whites
that surround it.
A hooded crow disrupts
the cornea’s film: it
raises a grave body
on obsidian wings
that ghosts the eye
like the absent sister birch
of this dead-end street
who left her inflorensences
on roof, balcony, yard,
before our neighbor
cut her down. One still stands
with the ghost of rhyme.
Come spring, this birch
will litter our lives with aments
again. We must withstand
such love falling from the sky.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
Rimas Uzgiris is a Lithuanian-American poet and translator. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, Hudson Review, The Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. He is the author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books), translator of eight poetry collections from Lithuanian, and the Venice Biennale Golden Lion winning opera, Sun and Sea. His poetry has been translated into Lithuanian and Ukrainian. Uzgiris was born and raised in the USA, holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Grant and NEA Translation Fellowship, he teaches at Vilnius University.
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