What stories can she can tell

I only remember her later years, of spreading shade over a grassy lawn,

her lower trunk still wet in the morning from the sprinklers. 

Day by day, I never noticed her change, over the years that I walked

by with the dogs, first Buddy and Portia,  then Bella, frolicking, her fur

jet black, now white around the snout.

She was a presence, a giver, this tree, that was one of several who were just

there.

Until she was not, the victim of roaring chainsaws, she came down in large 

pieces, death on the ground, and no sign of illness, the fallen victim of 

a distant bureaucrat who decided that she might fall one day, given her 

advanced age.

now, in her shrunken state, she can still offer of herself, a seat for a 

visitor from Texas, on a sunny day.

what stories can he tell?

 

Chapter Books - oh my!

we kept revisiting the page with the tiger, his paw caught in a wicked trap,

the children releasing him back to the wild, but why, she asks.

The Emperor, Haille Silassie, threw pennies to the peasants, while the Rastas

worshiped him as their Messiah, a man who lived thousands of miles away,

I asked, why, we both asked why as we turned the pages of our respective books.

These days, we ask why, when our eyes are wide open, and our ears can hear

she is wrapped up warm in her handmade nightgown, of the fuzzy rainbow fabric

I unwound from a cardboard bolt in the fabric store by my house.

I was surprised to learn that her father had handsewn her nightgown, and I admired

the uniform stitches, the precisely cut arm holes, and I wondered what had inspired

him to do this loving task, one so often done by a woman.

we shall always be asking why.