Ode to the Ailanthus Growing Out of a Pile of Rubble at the Edge of Pennsy’s Supply Depot on Paxton Street in Harrisburg
The highway is your mother—
seed spun off wheels or maybe a roof
& you were born in this ragged rubble pile
growing and reaching towards the constant concrete
thrumming above you; somehow you find nutrients in the slag
heap along the roadside ditch in this forgotten corner of a railyard
in a forgotten part of a city that people only ever drive through, not to;
but here you are, shading the cracked macadam and iced tea cans and our
everyday plastics and here I am complaining about this cornered ecosystem
and overdevelopment and how this city pollutes the river with raw sewage
each time it rains and the air quality that’s so bad because of the traffic I am
driving in and how all the invasive species are taking over our riverlands
growing in our slashing and forgotten selfishness and as the light turns
green I remember that some call you the tree-of-heaven and wrap you
with broad clear tape that catches the larvae of the spotted lantern fly
—two unwanted disparaged species that have found each other—
while others just cut each of you they find down, trying to rid
this landscape of your seed, but perhaps what’s been planted
and spread and found rootholds in this land is never
easily removed and perhaps it shouldn’t be perhaps
each of us has a right to be where we found
ourselves, just waking up suddenly in life
sharing the same sound we are all born into
—a watery silence and then our own voice.
Michael Garrigan lives along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. He is the author of three poetry collections. Read more.