...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
...and the rings that belong to us