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Published: Wed Jul 1 2009
Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convirtiéndose en characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
Misc. poem (tree)

Morning braided with crow and maple tree.

The crow falls from branch to porch rail, then settles on asphalt. That decides it: we no longer need try

to know what we can’t. How far toward morning does a gold beak turn?

And if every tree is an Ur-tree?

Every tree is an Ur-tree. The wink of a crow resolves what’s true

for the morning: for the crow, the panorama shows as a tray

of perches.

Daneen Wardrop is the author of three poetry collections: The Odds of BeingCyclorama, and Life as It, which received the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Award. A fourth collection, Silk Road, will appear later this year. She has also published three books of literary criticism, including Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing (New Hampshire, 2009).  She has received, among other honors, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNITriQuarterlyFIELDThe Antioch ReviewCrazyhorseKenyon ReviewMichigan Quarterly ReviewNorth American Review and elsewhere. (updated 4/2018)

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