They severed the broad arms of the pine
that just the day before held my spirit
close to the sky.
It wasn’t like a car wreck.
It was worse.
I flinched, I ducked, I dove for cover.
I fled inside and pulled the blinds.
Five of the seven
trees next door –
who will house the birds?
They paved paradise because
You know, the sap, it drips
On our cars.
My father was a boy
when that tree was a seedling.
The first ground he trod was
among pines in Ukraine.
He felt the soil through shoes
his father made.
It was blind hope
that brought my grandfather
to Jamaica Plain where when
my father followed he felt
no soil beneath those soles,
just pavement.
So he ran to the pond and
walked the paths I’ve run and
fell in love with the same water
we all drink today.
He tied the laces on his skates and
slipped out with blind faith onto
ice too fragile to support him
If his life had ended that day
cut down like the boughs of trees,
who would have held me on his shoulders?
I’d be a ghost –
a nestless bird.
