Tributaries: "Landmarks"

By Deborah Fass

Not the lawn taken by oxalis, not the yellow flowers we recklessly
call buttercup, not the Caution: Repaving sign tacked to a sawhorse,
not the sawhorse, not the pavement, not the 1950 single-family ranch,
not the vacant lot, not the nest in the naked maple, not the squirrel,
not the five caws of the crow, not the telephone wire, not the metal
on metal wheels on train tracks, not the grinding tree chipper,
not the hundred-year-old pine dead of drought, not the drought.

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Deborah Fass’s work appears in literary journals including New Directions, Kudzu House Quarterly, and The Clearing (U.K.). Her work has been shortlisted in contests including the New Rivers Press Many Voices Project, the Frost Place Chapbook Competition, and The Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Program. She lives and teaches English in the San Francisco Bay Area