Haunted by the Ghost of the Woodsman as a Boy Vertical, the plane of my childhood; arms raised like wind- whipped twigs. It was boy’s work to cut down a tree in perpetual surrender. I recall a rain-splattered street, origami sails, child’s paper boat; the runoff swift over the precipice. Every spring on his birthday, (mark the soil) I languish in nightgown past noon; await a revelation or something buried to stand up straight. Outside, everything is drenched with guilty new growth. The petals of the bloodroot shiver on their stems like a thin white flag. Ellen Bihler prev    next