By Matthew Daddona

On the way home the lieutenants were talking
about an aided case

some kid they had to cut down
from a tree

and his dad, after the fact, saying
did you get all of him? did you get all of him?

I can feel pieces
of me scattering everywhere
I choose not to look,

scared of what I’ll find.

Osprey-turned-telephone-pole
climber, tree-rappelling avoider

of fate. My mind
wanders seeking the busy.

We’re learning to respond
in seconds
to an emergency

that could take a lifetime
to untangle, maybe a few.

Who has the patience,
the time?

Some climb and some go on
climbing. You’re not supposed to

discuss first and last names—you go on
speaking to the dead as if you’re speaking

about them. At night
the trees languor in rapt silence

lucky to have survived
another century.