Thrush Poetry Journal
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Kathryn deLancellotti
​

Root
 
Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God
-Anne Carson
 
A redwood falling is a sign of God,
 
is a boy who discovers
his father’s homeless,
 
wants to feed every
hungry mouth
 
on every hungry corner.
A tree feeding its sapling 
 
to reduce root competition
for the next generation
 
is a sign of God.
When a redwood 
 
fell across Cold Springs Ct. 
and blocked the road
 
to Planned Parenthood,
 a woman listened—​
 
she was stuck in a storm
and it took days to slice
 
the trunk away.
Two days too late
 
is a sign.
Is a dying tree
 
sending wisdom to its kin,
sending carbon
 
signals for defense.
The forest,
 
not a tangled mess
of competition—​
 
but a mother reaching
for a star, rooting
 
into darkness
is a sign of God,
 
is wet soil,
that final place—​
 
God’s mouth 
just waiting to swallow. 




Kathryn deLancellotti’s chapbook Impossible Thirst was published with Moon Tide Press in June 2020. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a former recipient of the George Hitchcock Memorial Poetry Prize. Her poems and other works have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Quarterly West, Cultural Weekly, Rust + Moth, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University and resides in Harmony, California, with her family.




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