Chronoscope 227:  Watch the twilight backyard evergreens

Watch the twilight backyard evergreens
cedars, spruce, lowslung pine
drift twitch like a thousand
rudderless origami boats

the shade and spark highlight
and deeper shadow fold paper
float spinning in a basin
like a blackbird murmuration

each mild movement, each rock
each fingertip swirl of tiny waves:

what never can depart, arrive
but stays there:
arbitrary, bedeviled.

JOHN WALSER

John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, South Dakota Review, Plume, Posit, Stone Circle Review, and One Art. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, John is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.