“I watched it through the kitchen window,
up to my elbows in dishes and meat
burning on the stove, but I couldn’t take
my eyes off it, been so long since I seen one.
It was small, baby-like, at first, didn’t halfway
know what to do with itself, just spinning
and whipping its little head so fast it turned
white as a turnip. Then it must have made up
its mind, somewhat, growed up real fast, it did—
darkened and dropped from that wild sky
like a sly old fox on a lonely hen, swinging
here and there, deciding what it wants,
you see, and I’m thinking, Lord, not that one,
not my Wedding Tree. Then like it heard
my thoughts it plucks that tree right up out
of the ground like a weed, roots and all.
Forty years that tree stood!” she cried,
slapping her hand flat on the table
and turning her head. Later that evening
the old man carried his tools to the tree alone,
stripped bark to the pith and drilled deep
into the trunk, stopping when the bit got stuck,
pulling it out and starting again. A short rest after
many tries at the heart, he stood and poured
old tractor oil down the long-bore holes
and held lit matches to the flat, black eyes.
But the tree refused fire, and the old man
sat in the dark, back against trunk anchored
to ground under roiling sky, cold drill
loose between callused hands.
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Click on the red arrow in the YouTube video above to hear the author reading this poem. Music by Kevin Bakefield.
