grief card 1

--- art and prompt by Manon Banta, Plant

The carrots that survive the coldest winters

make the sweetest, carbohydrates shivering

into sugar, how delicious the will not to die.

The luthier prizes the spruces from harsh climates,

the lean dense fibers of their rings ring and wail,

mourn low branches it rid to reach sunlight.

What does not produce fruit is pruned. This makes

sense. But only God knows which will 

not, His preemption my ash and pregnant silence.