The Murder of a Tree

The Murder of a Tree

 

Old Edwards came and splashed a tree

And stood to watch it burn one night,

Wry smiling with his can of gas.

He came and chopped it up the next,

Spread blackened oak all laid about

Well hacked in clumps then piled up,

And never asked a soul a word.

 

He never asked a soul a word.

That tree had stood for countless years—

My father’d carved his name in it

Inside a heart, with mother’s too.

And all Old Edwards had to say,

I asked you know, he said, “so what,

I own the land, so what of that?’

 

Donald Dean Mace

  

Donald Dean Mace is an Arizona-based poet and writer. He is a frequent contributor to Ariel Chart.