the writing machine

dogwood and hawthorne robins
grow on ridgetops,
along the quilted seams of property lines,
the place that is not a place
dogwood is junk wood, good for nothing
but paper pulp
and an embarassment of fruitless flowers
that the hilbillies say come at easter ,
because the tree was cursed
to never grow large enough to crucify a man again
hawthorne grows in small stands on the hilltops,
black clusters of cruciform thorns
waiting to prove them wrong

the robins rest in their branches, their chests still spashed
with the blood they never touched, the thorns
waiting for a head to crown