Johannah Bomster

There’s a man and a woman.
A tree in a yard. 
A car in the drive. 

They could be any man
and any women 
standing side by side.

Back then, the tree so young the man
can wrap his fingers right around it,
and then the woman says

I’m not cutting my hair just for you.
She has snipped herself 
from the wedding photos
and taken herself away.

Later the man remarries,
but this wife’s no better: 
she trims all the hedges too closely,
she plucks all the fruit from the tree.

You don’t believe me, 
the woman tells him. 
You don’t believe 
I’m shoring up the world. 

Johannah Bomster has emerged from a long writing dormancy ready to make some noise, like a cicada, only human.