Anti-Elegy for the Trees
How tired I’ve grown of the trees their weeping
boughs, the musty slop of the leaves they discard, wanton, wet
on the ground their seedy fruit ripened into rancor
their stagnation that passes for something like humility
their relentless decay into barely mortared shrapnel
duned under mossed earth until a storm presses
the full brunt of its heel how they made of me a wary child
who knew to dread a hurricane mostly for what the trees could do
as it raged, how they seem to lean into splintering fragility
lean up against our human softness
\ \
What I know of indignity I unearthed in my father’s black
eyes when Isabel’s kicking gusts snapped that terrible White
Oak The grandest tree I knew, it held the roots
of his pride, which drew into early winter as he was forced to crawl
callused hand over foot over the downed tree’s berth, through split
branches and clumped burrs just to get to work that day, crushing
what remained of robins’ and squirrels’ thatched dens—
evidence of some urge that possesses wildlife to nest
in the ficklest of outgrowths Though who am I to judge
another’s home, knowing myself what it is to shelter
in something bound for ash
\ \ \
Procyon lotor; Vulpes vulpes; Ursus americanus the words I didn’t have then
for what the other bankers must have thought of my father, his skin
scratched and slick with struggle The animal they cast of him
in the flimsy silence of glances—worse, of looking
away. The nerve of them those damned trees, to, lie
lifeless, as if they understand what we never could As if so evolved
beyond any foolish hope that it’s possible to rise again after so brutal
a culling, that there is anything to do in that wake but allow oneself
to be cleared away, in whatever manner most pleases the upright
Who are we to deny the carpenter his craft? the trees ask, mocking
How they loom over us even the long-petrified
in this righteous better knowing
\ \ \ \
Yes, it’s true, we need them and I’ll concede their beauty, but how I tire, too,
and sooner still
of beauty—especially the kind we understand as needed—
the kind that looks most fantastic in relief as dark absence framing a low hanging sun, and is so defined by its inverse by what can be marked as ugly, or sorrier
ordinary
\ \ \ \ \
Look, I can’t make sense of this scabbed grudge
Thorns nestled in the sweetness of my throat
stick me at the thought of his dirty shirt, of that day I fell
out of my beloved playground Maple Bark grating my stomach
I slid, in sap-slow agony onto the sand that spat like gunpowder
under my shoes, my hands hot with betrayal My blouse relieved of its pearl buttons
How dare that tree not hold me as had its kind so many of mine before?
My arms not taut, not braided twine and so not rope enough?
\ \ \ \ \ \
Please, excuse my coarse tone my manners more pitiful than strewn limbs
I’ve tried to swear off speaking ill of the dead (I could argue
for the gray area of the dying) though that promise means nothing
except this: I’ll bite my tongue only when the last tree blackens
And even then, so many will grieve their burning
whereas any tears welled in the aftermath of our fires, of all those
burnings were pulled from onlookers’ ducts
merely by the sting of smoke Oh trees, how I fear you
haven’t taught me much more than the difference
between weeping and watering eyes
