...In honor of my red maple, cut down yesterday and one from my childhood ________
My father had the tree cut down Drought finished it... after a couple years of blight
A hundred seasons Spreading sweetness commanding grace
Mom took pictures of it coming down Neighbors with lawn chairs Ring-side seats for the aerial gymnastics this circus of snarling saws Dad joked about selling selling tickets backyard picnics-- a Red Sox game
While silent photos watch she surrenders her shadows to the terms of light stumps, dust stages of death the good-bye of a friend
What must that Yard look like now? A shadeless glaring lot
Excuse a few silly moments to mourn a tree to remember lying on flagstone after sweeping them off (They must have circled her trunk once kept finding more as I worked with a broom) building a sweat, a fort, my private place under the tree that offered shelter
My father worked too Trimming, raking, mowing, cursing her keys... Maple keys... that when you stamped had that satisfying snap of plastic bubble packing
Says he's gonna buy a new one ...sterile, hybrid, keyless kind ...so I was tired and lay down to watch white clouds float in the bluest sky I can remember... ...daydreams...interrupted... Air Raid Warning... ..Noon... Then clouds again ...and I was with them
She talked in leaf language and had much to tell When her song part came, I slept somehow... Since then years of singing in my head
At the end of the world when the young man left I lay on a hammock under her
When music turned...Savage Hers? The same... presence... yearning...rooted... direction
this letter says. “She's fallen” a slab of trunk for family members A neighbor will have firewood for years
Her memorial? ...in my front room to set coffee on... to lay magazines....
But I will find the rings that belong to us! Cut her song from tangled voices in anxious traffic on clearer days— when clouds won't float but grasp, instead a sky attempting a silvery-blue ...the cooler shades of memory
From the lawn chairs—groans, apology! “ Not many trees like that one!”
Not many lives have majesty....
I used to think the wind was born in her arms ...then spread to all the other trees
Keep trying to remember what she said... but there's only her hush