Pine Heart
by Sean Sexton
Those hard remains from a former
state of the world—
years concentrate—scattered
over boundless tracts, where
they say, a squirrel could run
branch to branch, gulf to ocean
through stands of ancient pine,
relics the cold brings to mind,
unearthed, or gathered like eggs
when the light rises
and a chill breaks upon the days
recalling the true universe:
all warmth fugitive, fleeting.
Yet that sweetened air
returns to neighborhood evenings
in smoky malinger.
Now the fallen tree, driven around
two summers since the wind,
cut and stacked with rotted-
off posts, pile revisited.
Quickly a wood-yard, made in a clearing,
and that confection again, opening
from split chunks of pine
flayed and strewn like something slain.
By sharpened iron, angle, and swing
to divine the grain; all our wanting
illusory: one only need find a door—
between each knot—great things in store.
Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch. He divides his time between managing a 700-acre cattle operation, painting, and writing. He is author of two chapbooks, and three full volumes of poetry: Blood Writing, Poems, Anhinga Press, 2009, and May Darkness Restore, Poems, Press 53, 2019, and Portals, Poems, Press 53, 2023. He performs regularly at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, and is on the faculty of the 2024 Southeastern Writers Assn. Conference on St. Simon's Island, GA in June . He was nominated for a 2020 and 2021 Pushcart Prize and received a FL Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2001. He's a board member of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation and founding event chair of their Annual Poetry and Barbeque held each April, now in its fifteenth year. He also co-founded Poetry and Organ Advent and Lenten Concert Series at Community Church in Vero Beach, FL featuring nine concerts annually attracting poets from all over the US. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016.
