this fugue by Bach imagines an uphill walk
every leg muscle fraught
and yet all I do is walk across level lawn
to the corner by the path with step ladder climb
up and tie a rope around stunted pine
I feel my senior lethargy in my slow measured gait
slow and steady wins the race
I say to myself
like the turtle under carapace
back and forth now with chain saw from Sears
this from J’s father so many years ago first
cut a notch eggplant size to aid in the felling
& then start the cut see all the ladybugs on
this bark startled by the vibration cut until the chain
misaligns
goes rogue
like a friend bootlegging Drake’s latest anti-dance demo
so I sit with wrench & re-align & get back to it
until it’s time to pull the rope and watch
the needled life thud on the brown grass
& then on to the clean up
put pine cones in a bin and start cutting off branches
until the chain slips off again and again
sit and fix sit
and fix
these small octothorpe blades hashtag my father’s fingers
thick with work in back garden singing Verdi and then come
in
oh he loved his thick milk
soured whole milk and vinegar
with spare ribs or cucumbers
oh tastes of childhood
he probably never did what I did next
pushing the trunk off the stump & falling over onto my
nose
scratching wrists up to elbows
probably paperback karma
for depriving the birds of one more tree
oh peristeronic crime
oh uphill Bach-like climb
oh this life
