After untitled photograph by Chuck Hartman
Two bare maples flanking deep-cracked
asphalt — the scene forever cortexed: long
ago a fifty-eight Rambler, whiskey lost
in the frozen Jersey emptiness, aiming
to slide between those two pillars, crashed
hard against the skyreaching one on the right.
They stand there still: winterdeadened barren
thick-skinned creatures, feathering upward, ever
more narrow, till nearly lost against gray clouds.
Asphalt pebbles litter the short-mown roadside
weeds, but will not kill them. The road fades
into distance, to a dense black thicket.
Worrell studied literature and philosophy at Union College. His poems have appeared in U.S. 1, Mad Poets Review, Wild River Review, and Fox Chase Review (autumn 2009). He has performed poems at Chris’ Jazz Cafe, Cornelia Street Cafe, and Cafe Improv.
