Thomas Locicero’s most recent poem to appear here was “That Morning” (February 2018).
The Rest of the World
By Thomas Locicero
The acorn tells the story of the oak.
The oak would only speak about the rain.
But lately, it has stretched and as it spoke,
it spoke about its strange inaugural pain.
Beyond the bright red barrow by the park
and past the blooming bushes up the slope,
it saw the saw-man sawing in the dark.
The tree fell flat; the sky beheld a rope
a child used to swing on in the sun
till some unspoken tragedy occurred.
A woman tried to get the rope undone;
the saw-man, concentrating, cut his cord.
It seemed a country set out on its own
and not a peaceful place to raise a child.
All spilled about the tree, some seeds are sown.
Like that, civility gives way to wild.
This reminded me of poems I read as a child.