John Palen

Just One More

It’s an old crabapple,
not pruned for years,
more thicket than tree.
I cut dead and diseased
limbs and branches,
little shoots on the trunk.
After an hour I’m
tired, but see just
one more limb
that beckons —
healthy
but crowded, going
the wrong direction.
I stand directly
under it, sawing,
wanting to be done.
When it breaks free
and falls I have one
second before it
hits me to consider,
this is how soup
is ruined, relation-
ships sunder,
wars start.

John Palen is the author of Distant Music and Open Communion: New and Selected Poems, both from Mayapple Press. His latest book, Riding With the Diaspora, won the 2021 Sheila-Na-Gig chapbook competition. He lives, writes, and gardens on the Illinois Grand Prairie.