April Landscape
J. R. Solonche

April Landscape

From this distance,

about an eighth of a mile,

the dead trees in the swamp,

for years now bereft of bark,

look like living birches white

against the dark green of the pines

behind them, while among the branches,

the crows don’t care one way or the other.

J. R. Solonche

is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has been publishing poems in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books) and teaches at SUNY Orange in New York's Hudson Valley.