​Pandora's Collective Poetry Contest (2020)
2nd Place Winner

WHAT THE TREE SAW

The thinning out of others like her.
Their unceremonious breaking.
The chasing out of birds
and the coming in of man.
The dying that came with that.
Slender white pines stripped of their softness
to be shipped south.
At night, the moon: that wondrous and dimpled mouth.
Her own body growing.
Her branches becoming more.
The bones of a first house, then walls,
then the woman who lived there
hanging laundry that haunted the yard
like ghosts.
The first whispers of cities.
The concrete monoliths
and the wantonness.
Again, and again,
the tree’s own coming undone,
the relenting and shrivel of green before winter.
The months-long almost-death.
Her thaw. Her sudden and perfect blooming.
​
- ​Chelsea Comeau