All at Once
BY ED ROBERSON
Trees have whole streets
of when they were planted
plaqued with when the city is
to inherit them dead
of age almost all at once as if
a natural bombing.
People see a bill not figured in,
a blood red
collection come
like fall’s leaf due without fail
an unseen cost of the design:
pale bud and yellow blossom—
though seeming little to do this time
with tense spring
in the window
of dead and dying trees’ terms up,
with expecting a life by life replacement—
not this plague of life’s time
as a season across the city.
By trial we do, but don’t
know how death counts the rings
from trees to clocks,
species to singled soul
at its hour. or on history’s days we all die at once.
Ed Roberson, "All at Once" from To See the Earth Before the End of the World. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Landscape Without You
BY CATE MARVIN
Roofers scrape the scaly lid
of an auto shop beside the house
where I live. Where I live
shirtless men tear at the black
scabs of a roof's old flesh, toss
scraps into the back of a truck
parked in the lot next to a house
where I live. Where I live
a tarp rattles at night, plastic
rustles, and trash is kicked along
pavement by wind. Roofers
curse and shell the tire shop's
peeling lid beside the house
where I live. Where I live
a tarp shakes all night; cans
land on pavement, tossed from
windows of cars that blur by
where I live. Where I live
windows are ladled red with
light your sun leaves me with.
Repairs are made to roofs which
will never cover me. As I read
the road between us, tire tracks
unscroll their tawdry calligraphy.
Any day now you shall arrive, roar
into my eye with your mountainside.
Where I live when I live where
landscape cannot survive you.
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