September 23, 2025

Survivor by Stephen N. Chaffee

a Madera Creek
hundreds-year-old juniper
tenaciously rooted in the rock
sports a mammoth trunk
limb stumps blunt the sky
naked as a savaged beast

suffered a thousand insults—
raging monsoon gully washers
tumbling elephant-sized boulders
incinerating lightning
woodcutters and miners
spray-painted graffiti
pocket knife tattoos:

Jeanne             BRI
 loves                 +
  Mika              DES


an extended middle finger
of moist cambium-rich bark
snakes skyward
to one green branchlet
tipping in the breeze






Stephen N. Chaffee's poetry has appeared in Deep Wild Journal: Writing from the Backcountry, Eunoia Review, Florence Poets' Society Review and several anthologies. His first book of poetry, The Arizona Trail: Passages in Poetry, was published by Wheatmark (2018). Stephen likes to "exhale routine / inhale wildness." He calls Arizona home.

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