By Brady Robinson
Third Place of the David Middleton Poetry Award
Trees stand for trees and roots drink for leaves, like the tired spouse who wrests pot and sponge from stand to stove to cook and clean for time yet spent. The child lives to dance, loss flitting in his core when Mom and Dad walk the bend. Red knows blood no more than blood knows the cut from which it bled. Gray knows black from white for it is not God to be gray, but sad to mix the sky, which drains the clouds and floods the ground, sad to mix with pale sun rays. Trees like a fire that spreads, dries, and cracks them, like worn skin on a cold day when food is scarce and the axe must swing. Wood rears and groans back at the blade.
Jenifer Richardson