Like a ramshackle crane fly,
the limbs, the rusted harrow.
Itinerant workers
with pruning hooks in tow.
She had that first child young.
They cut him out. Tilled
each day: short, clear, & cold.
A smattering of hailstones.
What’s gone will be restored.
What grows grows in exile;
grows obdurate as any bough
that puts forth a good crop
and is sheared back, scanty
as the spring is populous.