Katy Ann Baxter was raised up on 30-some-odd acres of Shelburne’s Tunnel Hill Farm in Taylorsville, Kentucky, under the care of her extended family. She attends the University of Louisville as a Visual Art/Education major and English minor. Her favorite authors include Marilynne Robinson, Silas House, Harper Lee, J.K. Rowling, James Still, Jane Austen, Tom Waits, and George Harrison.

 

 

Symphony

 

Have you ever seen– the break of a fallen tree
fraught not by a rod of God or the biting swipe of an axe
only fractured as naturally as a tried old weathered spine
and, vine by vine, stretched and strung tight, heavy of life
hung in the night, and through the simple early morn spliced
the weave of each ridge into another, the fit of each finger to its brother
each bridge, each branch, from measure to measure, built ‘til the top tilts
there, that final, gloriously humble bow to the great conductor, the composer
when the bark-laced trunk parts and brings us to an age-old heart, closer
there rise and climb the pipes, shows us the throat from forth a song
sweeps- an organ swipes through a cathedral sky, strong, and nigh
no, truly, there you hear the cadence; the break of the fallen tree
there, have you not seen the story, there– the symphony?

 

 

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