Overdose Psalm
–William Brewer

For how long and why I cannot say,
but in the wake of its falling—the great
spruce—everything, the axe, its weight
in my chapped hands, the skirt of golden
trunk shavings, the tree like an overturned
ship, is so altered by light, so foreign,
I can’t believe this was what I was after,
if I was after anything. Was it the fall?
Would I have even wanted that, or believed
I would survive it? It can’t be, though
as so often is the case, it is—the column
of light breaking through the black woods
only a reminder of what once resisted it.
I’m beginning to think that resistance
is everything, how it kept what is now
trees leading to a clearing, a forest.
Snow committing its slow occupancy,
filling the column like words, the light
saying in so few of them, like all terrible
truths, something here did not survive.