Catherine Moore
Ash Tuesday
It was a Tuesday
at twelve twenty-five
when she first noticed the baldness
each end-point of the tree's limbs
stretched bare against a blue sky.
By mid-afternoon
the top leaves had shucked themselves
and crows took up the wooden perches.
Come evening
the ash bark was smooth as egg shells
spotted with wood-boring beetles
which whispered the brevity of life
into tree skin. Dusk and its dust-making
pierced the landscape.
~
Catherine Moore is the author of Story (Finishing Line Press), 921b Elysian Fields Avenue (Return to Sender) (KYStory, 2015), and Wetlands (dancing girl press, 2016). Her writing has appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Cider Press Review, Southampton Review and in various anthologies. She won the Southeast Review’s 2014 Gearhart Poetry Prize and had work included in The Best Small Fictions of 2015. Catherine lives in the Nashville area where she enjoys a thriving writer’s community and was recently awarded a MetroArts grant. Catherine earned the MFA from the University of Tampa.
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