Southern Pine & Odonata// Chad Knuth

Southern Pine

I.

Here the timber trucks are daily.
You can hear their engines hauling
timber from around the wooded bend,
across the bridge along the byway.

II.

The timber—
cut and cleared of branches,
severed from its roots
—still resembles pine trees.

III.

Each day the timber comes and goes
through fast hands in lumber mills
sawing through ancestral sap,
stacking history neat and naked.

IV.

Still, the timber has its story—
it remains in bark now sheared away;
remains in grain now sanded down;
remains in stumps now ground to mulch.

V.

The timber shares its story when it creaks
in the floorboards of our houses
below the rumble of the trucks
and the kicking of our heels.

Odonata

Two dragonflies mating on the water
Filigree wings like crucifixes
Forever bound by
Martyrdom
Ever beautiful
On this
Small
Rock

Chad Knuth (he/him) is a poet and arts organizer. He currently serves as the VP of Programming for the North Carolina Poetry Society, and as a Poets Council Member for the Town of Carrboro, NC. He is a current MFA candidate at UNC-Greensboro, and his poetry has been featured most recently by Poets for Science and Digest Magazine.