Tree in 2010
Two loud, indifferent men in a greasy pick-up
came and took down the failed street-side tree
by my house. Poor thing was dismayingly dead,
no question – dry-dank, blackened and mouldy.
When last alive it was a hunched, unlikely stick
that would froth suddenly into snowy blossom.
No, I never noticed when the tree began dying,
must have marched mindlessly past it every day.
Now its small stump pokes at a hardened heart.
From 2010
The tree outside my house
(municipal planting)
is a frail jewel in flat suburbia.
Its bark is shiny white
and it blossoms
and strikes me daily
as unlikely.