*
Simon Perchik
This twig could just as easily
be a hurricane, drained then swept away
though it must sense downhill
with dying wood —what you collect
you steady between two fingers
already sunlight and ashes
and any second now
this scrap left for dead
will split in half and disbelief
—a random snap
as if you had forgotten
to count backwards, not sure
once you reach the emptiness
it will still answer, tell you
how to follow behind
well after well, filled
with passageways and slowly
you take up the slack, the unfit
the shaky wearing out in a circle
half sunlight, half chasing off
the cold broken open, infected
with fires that never recover.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.