Emily Patterson

American Elegy

It takes less than a breath:
decades of growth, severed.
The metal claw fumbles
for thick limbs, takes hold,
and slices. Sawdust showers
the sidewalk. Two silver maples
in late winter make a blush
cathedral. Now when their trunks
hit the truck, the impact rattles
the house. Now round red buds
litter the lawn like spent bullets.
My daughter watches at the window
before school, tells me when a tree
falls in the forest, it’s still a home
for wildlife. I don’t tell her
our country has just ordered forests
three times the size of California
to be cleaved for timber. Now
the workers line the cut maples
by the curb, and I think of squirrels
that scaled the bark, bluebirds
that rested in branches. Now
my daughter won’t be torn
from the scene: I watch her
perceive the world as other than
it ought to be. In the last light
of day, we plant a patch of wildflowers
in newly thawed earth, broken
by our hands.

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Emily Patterson (she/her) is the author of The Birth of Undoing, forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2025, as well as three chapbooks. Her poetry is published or soon to appear in North American Review, SWWIM, Literary Mama, Christian Century, CALYX, The Penn Review, NELLE and elsewhere. Emily lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio and works as a curriculum designer. Read more at emilypattersonpoet.com.