Fate
Carol Alexander
After you were born I started
spotting it again, in the clouds’ headlines
the tilting load of a truck tarped by smoke
the water towers cooking feverish stuff.
While the un-paused body carries on its work
churning atoms & skimming light
a gray skin-fall of guilt sheds invisibly.
The imagination of disaster: either you have it or you don’t.
Shadows seem to bleed for hours but the sun’s heat is lost.
Under the low footbridge, past nosing dogs
a balding cypress tree—neither one thing nor the other
half-bared branches slumped beneath November snow.
Spirit’s sphere, what is it? Maybe the greasy odors
of this particular wood, the fine, waxed needles with scaly cones
that pleat the ashen wind, crippled knees of cypress bent,
a vault of roots opening & small, furred things running out.
Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Fever and Bone (Dos Madres Press, 2021) Environments (Dos Madres Press) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press). Alexander's poems appear in a variety of anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review, One, Pif, Split Rock Review, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, Terrain.org and Third Wednesday. New work is forthcoming in Raintown Review and Ruminate.