*
Long ago, Denise Provost attended Bennington College to study poetry. She then became a lawyer, worked in local government, and served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for fifteen years She has published in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Quadrille, Poetry Porch’s Sonnet Scroll, Sanctuary, and Light Quarterly. Provost received the Best Love Sonnet award from the Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition in 2012, and the New England Poetry Club’s Samuel Washington Allen Prize in 2021. Her chapbook Curious Peach was published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2019. Her collection City of Stories was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2021.

This pavement is the bedside of a tree…

Denise Provost

The tree doesn’t yet know that it will die
on Thursday, so it grows rosy leaf-buds,
plump beads on its branch-tangle, reaching up
where perching birds complain until they fly.

All the neighbors gather to say goodbye
to the giant maple, soon to be cut
down to a broad, flat, multi-ringed stump,
its mighty trunk and branches hauled away.

Although today it is surrounded by
a crowd come to read poems and offer praise,
its fate shows in a vivid orange blaze
that city workers painted on its side.

A single brushstroke – how easy to be
hastened to premature mortality.

— Denise Provost

_________________________________________
To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu