Birch

You died in front of me
and I didn't even have the sense
to grieve.

I thought the woodpeckers
and the fluttering fluff of new birds
clustering with new feathers
and open beaks
meant you were still alive.

I thought the wild ones
who ran along your branches,
leapt and clutched and twirled,
flourishing their way from place to place
like crazily pulsing corpuscles,
like the flow of blood
or sap,
meant you were still here,
just maybe different
or asleep.

Mild spring came and kissed us in the wrong month.
Everything bloomed in one week,
too early.
You started dripping those golden tendrils
Japanese lacquerware style,
tentatively setting out points of green,
and then winter like a jealous lover
rushed back in to reclaim its place
with vengeance and bitter triumph.

And that's when it happened.
That's when you died,
along with my potted peach tree,
its two pink blossoms, new that week,
first blush of trust,
shriveling back onto tiny red branches
even as your own gold
faded back into the grey
and vanished.

The peach tree stays
in its pot on my balcony in the sun,
a perch for little flutterers,
a sad and elaborate stake
for English peas.

And I have argued to keep you, too.
There is still life in you,
I say,
the birds, the wild ones,
and you are still beautiful,
graceful and fine in your decay.
But I am told you are a danger
to property.

What should I have done?
You are older than I am,
and everything has a span of years, or days.
Would realizing the difference in April
between your life and life itself
have changed anything?

The inexorable price of man's things,
hard and still as steel and glass,
seals your fate
and instructs my grief
when to ignite.

Comments

[sognatrice]

My heart aches for you and the birch. I take it so hard when any of my plants die. It feels right to grieve because I have lost a loved one--a loved one I had been chosen to protect no less. But life is what it is, and we can't control everything, or anything...except for when we really f**k things up, as you explore beautifully in the last stanza. May Birchy rest in peace and may you always remember the bird and wild ones leaping and clutching and twirling. Birchy would've wanted it that way.

[Sara]

Thanks, sognatrice.

Nice use of asterisks, BTW. ;)