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Tree of Song
Reed of voice and gesture once and again once,
it trembles without hope in yesterday’s air.
The girl sighs, wanting to catch its essence; but arrives always
a moment late.
Ay, sun! Ay moon, moon! a moment late.
Sixty pallid flowers entangle her feet.
See how she rocks
once and once again— flower and bough virgin in yesterday’s air.
Wally Swist’s books include Evanescence: Selected Poems (Shanti Arts, 2020) and The Bees of the Invisible (Shanti Arts, 2019); A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (winner of the Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize, 2018); and Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest.
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