Elegy for the Ancient Tree

That tree was a teacher, whatever the weather

everyday birds, hawks, and osprey nested

in its branches, nations of common insects

fought in its gullies, while generations of deer

scraped their antlers against its trunk in rutting season.

Looking up to its crown, it seemed higher than the Brooklyn Bridge

from a ferry passing beneath-some were frightened.

Remember the tree's gentleness with bees and butterflies,

its hospitality to rodents, lavender and Lad's-love,

that for centuries horned lizards, toads

and snakes hid in its dens-the joys and sorrows it found

in heavy rains and snows, its heroism

at the timberline, its lifelong love of clouds.

The golden mantled squirrel survives.

Curious to take the ancient tree's measure, an "arborist"

chose to count its rings by drilling with a diamond-tipped corer.

Putting his back into the drill, as if the tree were marble,

he quickly passed through American history,

knot and counter-knot, to the age of Mozart,

through the Baroque, through Shakespearian grain,

through a charcoal cave where lightning struck,

through the time of Jesus and Buddha's enlightenment,

through the guano of owls, the Olmec.

In the era of the prophets, the drill broke

what could a tree person do? After clearing away young trees,

to save his drill, he appealed to forest rangers.

It took five, with orange hydraulic saws, to fell the great tree.

When they counted rings, they came to four thousand nine hundred years.

The tree they killed was the oldest known living thing on earth.

Where can you weep for the tree that had wept and laughed

beyond all human consequence? No one could agree

what poured out: butterflies or troupes of prima ballerinas,

old men or unemployed youths who never found a purpose,

newspapers, folios, books, leaflets or turtles

with ancient Chinese writing on their backs.

A madman shouted that God had carried the tree to heaven.

Everyone let him rave. Some say the fallen tree began to shudder

and sing a requiem for all the slaughtered, innocent multitudes.

Lingering for a moment before they disappeared,

two shadows searched for their young.

Or were they two readers in the Warsaw ghetto

stopping to buy a book out of a discarded baby carriage?

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved