Green Psychosis

The elm bark beetles’
contagion
cracked branches

ate top
to root

No one spoke
except to mourn the tree
each day browner

I hid

in maple, boiling sap
plugging the drain
with syrup, smelling lilac
saying: here’s the birch

remember: it’s just an elm

I buried my fist
in dying wood

Upstairs, the voices
did not stop rising

Bark splintered

fell

Abra Bertman