Last fall I thinned and divided some of the daisies and phlox and coneflowers and lilies and peonies in my gigantic flower garden. I tried to do such a careful job, but this spring the daisies and some of the coneflowers didn’t come back, and neither did the lavender, which I left undisturbed. I’ve planted delphiniums and coneflowers in their place, but I’m in mourning, as if by disrupting their natural growth I set something unintended in motion.

Choices, by Tess Gallagher

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,   
an unseen nest
where a mountain   
would be. 

                              ​(for Drago Štambuk​)

​Click here for more information about poet and short story writer Tess Gallagher. Today’s poem appears in her collection Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, published in 2011 by Graywolf Press. 

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