Ash Bore
 Nick Bosworth


Our way to the underbark
goes slow, a man plowing
a broken paint brush,
popping through each layer
painting the end in his bowel.
This man existed, insect of thousands,
died from seeding shit and stomach.
The tree’s death grows from a million
slow-gut punctures. We must feel
like a torrent coming on where
each compiles like static--then
rain that bites. It’s Friday, January,
and even we don’t know where
to winter. Let’s look for a drink
of vocation, a gradient
running down the glass that says:
our economy is efficient; we sink
ourselves and together make
something greater than
us--we make us. Some trees
make syrup, some cabinets.
Others through steam and hands
bend into music so unnatural
we rasp with the strings, dive for
that moment when nothing but
here exists. The ash is hard. Knotted.
Cancerous dark eyes within tasting
us taste with their rotten sap.
The drink is good and we can’t
help our germ destruction.