(1)
It takes winter’s stark eye to see the excess you’ve become.
(2)
The crisscrossing stalks, the branches that stop, the ostentatious thoughts: all block.
(3)
The knife pain of recognition cuts through the deadened wood.
(4)
Each cane explains to the scissor mouth of shears its need to remain.
(5)
The debris of me: dead wood, sentimental stalks, palsied limbs are strewn across the ground in a wounded heap.
(6)
Always cut just above the green face of the emerging bud.
(7)
Sliced back to nine canes shaped as an urn with wind blowing through my mind, I begin again.
(8)
The ache to grow and seek the golden curve is what life knows.
(9)
Beauty’s made from a thousand cuts along its way.