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?