Moving the Beech
a blank space where the tree was, a space that the birds pass over,
where the wind does not pause.
— Ruth Stone
If you had seen
its full crown,
seventy feet tall,
a billow of coppery leaves,
in sanguine light
clinging to clouds;
if you had smoothed
your hands over
elephant-hide bark
thick in its century of years,
or spread your arms
around its immense girth;
if you had watched
bulldozers slice sinew
and vein, dig ditches
around twin trunks
conjoined; watched
braided steel shot
through its core,
the massive body
slid onto a gurney,
dragged across
the field tilting toward
the land it knew;
you might have felt
a cleaving of root,
seen its tangled skein
of memory unravel
in the soil, witnessed
grief pool in sudden trenches,
felt the shiver of limbs
settle into new ground,
watched the slow smother
of light overtake it.
CAROL WAS’s poetry has appeared in such journals as the Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Natural Bridge, and many others. Read more.
“Moving the Beech” was first published in Nimrod International Journal.