18 Rings

Walking today

Making my way

Newly over an old path

I saw another banal tragedy.

The tired earth

Our good

And patient soil

Torn and broken.

The unsteady equilibrium

Of an already disturbed place,

Nurturing things

In a quiet and

Unremarkable way.

A small parcel

Not forgotten,

Just temporarily ignored.

That lustful pause

Called investment.

Time mostly representing

Price change

And commodity fluctuation.

Not the endowing

Of unremarkable life

To unremarkable places.

I walked over the torn

And broken earth.

Small stones and gravel

Poured like vinegar

Into open wounds.

Tire tracks leading away

To faster and more complicated places

Bringing endless complication;

We know

Because we’ve seen

Where those tracks lead.

Passing by the pyre of sticks

I have come to apologize

In the self-conscious way of

Trying to be less self-conscious,

At the foot of the pile of sticks and branches

I notice stillborn spring buds

For trees always trust

The promises of spring.

The stump has 18 rings

Of varying width,

18 years of patient growth.

For this?

To extend a power line’s support.

To sink steel hooks into the earth.

But did I see the tree 

Before now?