Wreckage
 
Once in a while, a bird flies over
the downed trees, the shattered, shining
branches. We pick our way through thawing mud
 
that will freeze, then thaw, then freeze again; 
 
we huddle near the fire as the brief sun 
descends into night.                Then spring comes. 
Trees and flowers thrive. It feels like years ago—
 

the ice storm—yet the pecan still drops branches. 
 
Wreckage lines the streets and strews the forests.
My family is broken like the trees, 
none of us speaks to all of us—
 
but I can no longer grieve for what I cannot change.
 
Meanwhile, the world lurches 
into yet another war. Our toes hang over the brink
of annihilation. Children perish. 
 
Their backpacks and schoolbooks remain. 

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Ann Fisher-Wirth is Mississippi Poet Laureate 2025-2029. Ann’s ninth book, For What Is, Praise: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming in the Silver Concho Poetry Series from Press 53. With Laura-Gray Street, she coedited The Ecopoetry Anthology and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology. A senior fellow of the Black Earth Institute, Ann has had Fulbrights to the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and Uppsala University, Sweden, and residencies at Djerassi, Hedgebrook, Storyknife, and elsewhere.. She received the 2023 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Mississippi Arts Commission. Ann retired in 2022 from the University of Mississippi.