98poems/scrawny

I hate a scrawny tree,
one that hasn’t
quite made up its
mind to be a tree,
like this bottle brush
I look out on
which doesn’t bloom.
And even the oak
just past it,
which isn’t much
as oaks go.

Not like the one
in the yard
of the house
where I was born,
whose branches
stretched
as wide as
the house.
At least as I
remember it
that day we
went back, all
of us but one,
and stood beneath
it, with husbands
and wives,
and daughters.
My brother with
a new burgundy
Porsche, my sister
still walking,
but with a
cane.

9/15/98