All at Once

By Ed Roberson Ed Roberson

Trees have whole streets

of when they were planted

plaqued with when the city is

to inherit them dead

of age almost all at once as if

a natural bombing.

People see a bill not figured in,

a blood red

collection come

like fall’s leaf due without fail

an unseen cost of the design:

pale bud and yellow blossom—

though seeming little to do this time

with tense spring

in the window

of dead and dying trees’ terms up,

with expecting a life by life replacement—

not this plague of life’s time

as a season across the city.

By trial we do, but don’t

know how death counts the rings

from trees to clocks,

species to singled soul

at its hour. or on history’s days we all die at once.

Source: To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Wesleyan University Press, 2010)

Biography

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Roberson studied painting in his youth and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh. His extensive travels inform his work,which is also influenced by spirituals and the blues, and by visual art, such as the mixed-media collages of Romare Bearden. Poet and critic Michael Palmer has called Roberson “one of the most deeply innovative and critically acute voices of our time.”

Roberson is the . . .

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