The Day the Tree Fell Down

crumbling. It died of old age,

I tell you, like a man. We wept.

We had worn our time upon it, put

our arms around to touch fingertips

and we measured ourselves, our feelings

on the years. We made our calculations

pay, then. Now, the fears, age,

daily mathematics. The tree held

the green. Birds, squirrels, coons

made memory there until the day it fell.

They got out. It groaned for twenty minutes.

I tell you, it sighed as it bent,

its branches catching the dull fall,

the soft turning in wet dissolution.

The body lay exposed: a gut of grubs,

a lust of hollowness. We wept,

as I say, more than it was called for.