In the blizzard you could barely
see the paper birch, nothing but
cold monochromatic clips ghost
white, you could feel yourself
blown sideways. You could see
yourself as in a film. The tree
shows in the slow frozen
fragile way the poem sometimes
anxiously strips down. Duct tape-
colored lenticel strips on bark.
The film is a poem. As if your
thoughts are separating from
you, small beetles. Silent, dense
base of tree now buried in snow,
hiding. They say a birch grows
in a V to sun. Does the world
feel violent to the tree? All night
it had been snowing & everything
had become something else. If
you are a letter you are a lowercase
i. Your arms thin like twigs.
