The winded willow wailed,
and the wild flowers hung on every sigh of the tree’s weathered leaves.
The shed door yawned each time he raised the axe;
blade-on-bark gave him a fractional sense of ‘being there’,
and a wry smile — thin, like dawn’s frost-moustache on the Chevy’s windshield —
shaped his lips into worn wiper blades,
which stifled the sound of his teeth chipping away at winter’s breath.