My grandmother had an oak tree that was a dragon in her front yard.
It sat waiting patiently to swallow the summer-lemon sun whole,
spitting out golden and flame-licked leaves.
I played in its snake-tunneled shadows below, perpetually
squinting upward into the sky.
Too big to climb for me.
But perfect for day-dreams on my back.
My mother caught a baby robin fallen from that tree once.
There was nothing we could do.
Young, then, nestled in withering brown leaves and the pale skin of my mother’s fingers,
to our great sadness it passed, cold and small.
Ten years are only ten leaves-changing to an oak.
But perhaps the robin’s death changed something in the tree.
Half its leaves flew away as if chased. Its branches twisted inside themselves.
The green was gone.
My grandfather cut it down.
There is nothing romantic and no armor involved in a chain saw for a once-dragon of a tree.
My mother felt sick soon after.
Sometimes I dream about her standing on a stump of a tree with one green leaf.
In her hand is a red-breasted robin, singing, and on her face , gone are the hard lines
a disease creased there.
Sometimes I dream she tells me to come home and when I wake up,
I weep and tell her I can’t.
Not yet.
But I ask her to wait for me. And when I wake up, I wait for the sound of robins nearby.
My mother’s smile, sad and joyful, lurks within bird song.