The Arborist
The arborist: “This tree is nearly eighty
years old, and bound to fail. Put in when folks
developed Rosemont Street — all up and down
the yards the same — the maples, oaks, and firs.
No wonder she lost this limb.” I almost said
I’m seventy-one myself, with lanky limbs
that take me loping ’round the block three times
A week. I hoped he’d say, “Pas possible!”
(His name’s duBois!); instead he said, “See?
You know exactly what I mean.” Mark laughed.
“So what’s the fastest growing tree?” he asked
duBois. “The sycamore. It grows six feet a year,
and when it’s done, it’s sixty feet, providing shade
like this poor maple.” Poor maple. Such girth
I wouldn’t call it poor, but Mark had feared
the insides rotted out; duBois concurred.
We paid him then to take old maple down
and plant the slender sycamore. We’ll have
to move the chairs elsewhere in the yard,
and get a large umbrella for our shade.
Or else we’ll sit all summer under the
porch roof, coaxing the tree to grow. And I’ll
be eighty-one when sycamore is done,
or else bequeath it to new owners, just
as when I think of our beloved Hannah —
who’s twelve and growing, too — bequeathed by us
to other tenders of emerging things,
those who never knew us — we, the arborists,
who sit where someone sat in nineteen
thirty-eight and watched a little maple grow.
— Paul Lamar
