The Destiny of a Great Man is a Muse

in memory of VG

I returned to a severe pruning. Whatever wood the men felled
carted elsewhere leaving absence midair. The trees’ astonished
and uncertain countenances. From midtown’s brood chamber
up the northeast corridor breathing steel and strangers’ exhalations.
Fist-clenching chill. Each votive bud on the magnolia poised to
burn. Dogs bark but the caravans keep rolling, your medzmama said.

–Susan Barba

Susan Barba is the author of two poetry collections, Fair Sun and geode, which was a finalist for the New England Book Awards and the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, which won the 2023 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Her poems and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, PN Review, and elsewhere. She works as a senior editor for The New York Review of Books.