With scorched limbs & girth of 8 linebackers,
where does longevity get you?
Car wheels on gravel roads splinter
the ends of mortal me.
Our lady of the manzanita,
stockinged in dirt-red armor,
give us this day parade & parry.
Behold the berried ministry.
No one will stand a chance
against such stamina.
“The Oldest Tree in Town”
(designation dubious
but I want to believe) is far
from what you’d call the prettiest.
It welcomes a powdery dust,
Martian green, into the fold.
Roped off like a precious stone,
its stature might be described
as wanting. Still the dog & I
make our end-of-day pilgrimage
to gaze upon its crown,
however spindly,
& sniff our way around
for what comes next.
—
Timothy Nolan (he/him) is a writer and visual artist living in Palm Springs, California with his husband and their rescue dog, Scout. He has exhibited extensively for three decades and his work is in the collections of the DeYoung Museum of Art in San Francisco, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. He’s been a fellow at Yaddo, Ucross, and Djerassi. His poems appear in The Hudson Review, Fourteen Hills, Puerto del Sol, and Pangyrus, among others.
