Dad Poet Society

I couldn’t believe how those box elder trees had changed
since that lazy time when our youth clouded all reality.
The large ones in the yard were shade
from sweaty games of childhood,
and for Mom and sisters, leafy bumbershoots
for shucking peas and plucking stems from strawberries
fresh from their running bed.
They were, or rather we were, climbers.
They hoisted us on patient shoulders
high enough to put our eyes right even
with the gutters on the porch
that used to swipe our tennis balls and frisbees.

The smaller ones out in the grove were magic.
They changed my brothers and me
into Deerslayer and Ching-ich-cook (that’s how we said it),
treacherous redcoats stalking.
Some were so close we turned sideways to get by,
trying hard but always failing to walk
without snapping twigs.
Grandpa had told us, when we were too young,
how to make willow whistles.
We tried to make box elder whistles.
We always failed.

That one fall day when what we knew as children
to be October bugs, black and red and ugly and everywhere,
were called by their right name, box elder bugs,
our trees began to lose their majesty.
Then coming home from college, expecting to see things changed,
not too surprised to find our two biggest trees,
closest to the old farmhouse, chainsawed down level
to the ground, out of reach of the power mower.
A Russian olive barely six feet tall, and one
scrawny spruce took their places on the lawn.
When Dad cleaned out the grove, he left a few saplings,
something for the grandchildren to climb upon.