[When I was eleven,]

When I was eleven,
they felled the juniper
that grazed our small blue house—

(In every poem, a quiet thing that it means to keep safe.

If this poem had an icebox, its quiet thing would be inside.)

At ten, in its branches,
I found a honeycomb
full of yellow nectar—

Daniel Schonning’s poems and essays have appeared in Seneca Review, Speculative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He studies and teaches in Colorado.