Yesterday morning I took down an old dead ash tree
that had presided over the middle of the backyard
for fifty years or so. In the evening, with a tea
in hand, I sat there and eyed the space where the
tree had only just stood, and noticed a bird who kept flying
to and from the stump, alit in sawdust, back to perch
on a carved fence-head nearby. After a while I understood
the bird’s plight of my making. We both nestled
there throughout the night, under thinly-aired twilit skies
awash in constellations, anxious for the birth of new trees.
© Chagall ∞
Alphabet City 