So honored to have a micro-poem chosen for the 2022 Poetry Path in Burlington VT. The submission guidelines were a challenge: poem must be 85-185 characters & spaces, and should reference the natural world, if possible. There are tweets longer than that! But the opportunity was there, so I looked at a few of my longer still-in-draft poems. There was one that I thought could be distilled, or “sugared-off”as we say in Vermont. I wrote this as a love poem to my husband, George. We celebrated our 40 year anniversary in October, so “Two Pines” came into its published form, high in the trees, as a small gift to him.

We entwine like two pines

wrapped bark to bark,

wholesome in devotion,

forty years held—

roots deep, branches up