Cutter is an ex-pat, new-Canadian writer and biologist living in Toronto. He is author of the book Evolving Tomorrow, and his poems have appeared previously in The Literary Review of Canada and Rowayat.
“‘Branches’ reimagines Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Roses, Late Summer’ (from House of Light, 1990) by inverting the question-to-statement structure and reinterpreting the same themes and reusing many of the same words in new ways.”
The fallen beech leaves, variegated gold
margins with pickle-green veins,
begin their task of mulching. The felled
goldfinches digest in cats’ guts,
their ragged clipped wings
ruffling in the quick wind
among the crinkles of pitch pine needles.
There is nothing personal
for any of us, the other side
of decomposition, no call,
I think, from beyond the trees.
Who teaches the fox kits
to live in the first spark of sunrise?
What inspires the beach roses
to sing arias in the old languages
of perfumes and reflected light,
enunciated plosives from dune to sun?
How to spend another happy life, nonsensical
blossoming in a valley, musing
on darkening skies
and song and the litter of children?
What would a pine or fox give back to the world
as does a rose in a field of roses, a finch
in a flock? What fearless question
would a beech sapling ask, after dark,
to seek the reason for the ambitions
of its stretching branches?
