Lathrop LeBarron
Killed by a falling tree
New York — June, 1836
Killed by a falling tree
New York — June, 1836
i.
If I could magic time,
reel back the seconds of that day,
could I unpin the single hinge
whereon the final moment swung?
ii.
There is a tipping point
where undercut and back cut
poise in stasis, the final fibers
of the trunk balanced
like a toe-shoed ballerina.
Pause the moment, Lathrop.
Step aside before the ankle buckles,
and the dancer falls into your unsuspecting arms.
iii.
Did some cruel winter gnarl
that sapling trunk enough
to throw it unexpectedly aside,
the way a man might lurch
unbalanced from an injured hip?
iv.
They bore his body home,
our baby’s hungry wails unheeded,
the smell of blackened biscuits
staining noontime air.
v.
Had we lain abed that morning,
or had a startling fox sprung from the copse;
had forest laid its soothing shade
west of where he stood;
if only wind had gusted a saving breath
and closed the hinge a different way.
“Felled” belongs to a sequence about the LeBarron family. Its companion poems, “Sundered” and “Bequeathed,” appear in Encore: Prize Poems 2026, from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
