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Joanne Merriam
Larix laricina Anaphora
Consider the hackmatack, the tamarack, its comical asymmetry.
Its whirled clusters of needles. Its hundred hidden chickadees.
The hundred hidden chickadees' down-slurred anaphoric whistlings.
Consider its yard, the yard's poverty, the spare automobile parts.
The free-range child, shirtless, shoeless, her mother at work,
her father sobbing inside the house, her dead brother still dead.
The tangled mass at the edge of lot, the whirled clusters of daisies.
The whirled cluster of daisies leaning against the gutted lawnmower.
Consider the small yellow boots lying on their sides under the porch.
The past that can't be altered. That keeps repeating.
The ghosts of hackmatacks squatting in the mist.
The mist's conquest of every view.
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