mitigation

beer bottle stands in the crotch of a three-trunked cedar stump
daring outrage at drunken intentional litter and arbitrary tree removal
until recollection mitigates – the non-native cedar drowned our sacred cypress
and the beverage provides every worker a palliative relief from drudgery
thus, the epiphany, whatever first impression, carries no meaning,
just a silver-labeled longneck shining in the severed limbs of a weed tree.
(Original Date February 8, 2003)