From the messily fecund trees she rejoices in
that arc and droop across her rooftop,
my friend estimates her head count runs
a thousand avocados a season.
Lemons as casual as acorns scatter
on the pavement, and oh the loquats raining
and the stain of superfluous persimmons . . .
In the eyes of a New Englander
God appears here a forgetful sloven
rotund and careless with cotyledons,
strewing the land with seed as if in mid-yawn,
letting a little of every unplanned
good thing trickle from the Almighty hand . . .
But who could overlook her favorite,
an elm brought overland in 1898
as a hopeful twig, now grown into a massive
Midwestern exotic that has outlasted
the rush for gold, the freeway toxins,
surfboards, fast foods, lotus-eating?
It holds on with a taproot deep as
the hellfire sermons of John Wesley,
wrestling the devil in soil and water
to go down sin-free into the hereafter.
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