Hidden Elm
What is this place that I’ve stumbled upon?
A courtyard playground, wedged between
an apartment block and a pre-war tenement.
At one end, a chain-link fence coiled in vines and ivy;
at the other, a soot grey outcrop of mica schist,
inconsolable as a beached whale. Who thought to
preserve it— this relict rib of the ancient island—
and to ring it primly with beds of tulip and hydrangea?
And how did that upstart elm manage to grow there
seven stories high clinging to the bedrock’s edge?
Nobody planted the tree. Only the rain to water it.
Yet it shoots up forked like the tongue of a snake,
branches bobbing in the pre-storm gusts. Who is this
stilt-walker poking its lanky fingers at the sky?
How long has it dwarfed the domesticated sycamores
in their tree pits below? Is it lonesome, or merely alone?
I’ve read somewhere that “sacred” means “set apart”
—an island shining in the stream of space and time.
That could be anyplace. Sitting on this wrought-iron bench,
waiting for the rain to wash my dust.
