Trees are eating a road near Chernobyl.
They have rooted through asphalt like insanity
and hunger, and have cloned many more willows
full of birds. We hope all of this is the health,
the recovery, three times more like a new heaven
baptizing itself in the songs of wrens and kingfishers
at the edge of starlight. Yes, the trees feed
shadows to the nests, and a few stray tabbies
claw into the scents and voices, so we learn.
Yes an old woman follows us, and relinquishes
her name because it was carved into a small tree
by her first lover more than seventy autumns ago.
The name is illegible now inside her mind.

—
Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, VA with his wife Kendall and thier son Alan. Kendall illustrated a book of his poems that has just been published: Fiddling At Midnight’s Farmhouse (Cedar Creek Publishing).