The Logic of SpringBY ALEXANDRIA PEARY

In another poem, called The Logic of Spring, a mechanical drawing of a treethat I've passed a 100 times on my way to a different problem.I glance backwards, and the stack of the daymultiplies, glancing backwards several times,the dog-eared corner with the graph paper sky of that morning and the logic of spring.Right before I wake, I hear the riposte of mean jays (blue dots that drag the pink banners of answers off the treewith words in gold italic latin) from the fog pumped in by the machineset on my lawn. First thing in the morning,(page numbers in all the dish rags hanging around the sink) I part the buttery curtainsto see beyond the doric columns sitting on my porch & the hibiscus twigthat someone has set the stump of such a tree—gray smudges and still intact line breakswith flashing pink splashes—outside my house while I slept.Seems unbearably cruel untilI realize that in the flapping fog I finally hear its questions.Are you so easily distracted by pieces of a poemattached to a tree? in which as the situation changesyou catch glimpses of yourself a series of emoticons.

Alexandria Peary, "The Logic of Spring" from Lid to the Shadow. Copyright © 2011 by Alexandria Peary. Reprinted by permission of Slope Editions.