At seven a.m. the trees at this park make a green horizon like a fence whose slats are
neither warped or out of place. It is the only green part of the day. Lawns are brown,
their grass as dead as brooms. It’s October and the trees still have leaves.
We are in need of rain. But the sun is here every day as though sent forth
like an auditor to inspect these premises. It makes continual transfers
of energy, the sun always has plenty, keeping alive
hollow trunks people used to drive through in old Model Ts.
No one does that anymore but I had a grandmother
like that, a living thing cut off from its branches
here, I take the metaphor too far though my grandmother did
leave her desert home. She married a soldier from south dakota
but if this left a hole wide enough to drive through, she did not say.
If it left a hole, it must have closed
behind her. It only meant my family’s ancestral trail from mexico was over.
But if this tree with the big enough hole is not dead (metaphorically speaking)
it is because of my grandmother (literally)
sitting on some farmhouse steps with her in laws and their daughters
of german descent and all with babies
in their laps in south dakota in the winter I have seen photos of
my grandmother’s black curls. If they brushed against these milk faced others it was so
that I, blonde granddaughter, would not understand two men speaking spanish
on the bench next to me at seven a.m. at this park. I do not understand
what makes trees that shade of green. The color is life bearing but what goes on
inside the leaves is the process terrible?
“In memory of Louise F. Wyant”