Mimosa #4

Mimosa #4

(After L. Niedecker)

You were my

 friend, mimosa tree, in that summer onslaught—when

there weren’t—when I needed—hotly flowered

you fanned out across

the gravel drive.

That talk turned to an invasive species

was to be expected.

Duly inspected, the dogwood  was pronounced

 dying at the scene in your shadow.

Thus the neighbors

cut you back somewhere across the

property line. 

 It must have been

too much for them, especially

the children, to see us so close.

Woe was I those overheated afternoons.

Though still, you kept me, despite

my inability to understand the root

of anything.

And now, in that all-subsuming,  glacial shift

 the sun stays low

and your spent seeds fall in the culvert

where no one goes.

There is little left.

Save something in the frenetic

twitching of the grey squirrel’s tale

astride your trunk, upside down:

Today, crack the exposed bone of the branches;

tomorrow,  gutter and scrape

the marrow.