Lost Catalpa

by Stephen Petroff

All I will say of that great tree is that it has been cut down.
I went for a visit and found it gone.
I was determined not to be stalled
by a death so large and sudden.
In the late afternoon, I went home
and continued my activities, as ever.
My first business was to make a pot of black tea.

As evening fell, a great deal of water fell,
from the sky, rain water.
I was suggestible: The tea tasted of rain.
As I drank from my old cup,
I listened at my open window:
I heard individual rain drops fall,
and I heard the things the raindrops hit:
a woodshed roof,
a piece of plywood propped under the eaves,
the leaves of the crabapple tree,
the leaves of the peach tree.

I flew the length of the ravine behind my house,
“using only my ears as wings,”
and I heard short bursts of sharp rain,
I heard the raindrops hit every bush and stone.
It was the kind of night I love,
but I wasn’t satisfied with it.

I would never deliberately complain about
how much I suffer from self–pity,
yet with the loss of this great catalpa tree,
I have dreamt of becoming Evil.
I knew that the rain was best for me:
I wanted to listen, rather than speak.
I listened to the storm and drank tea.
All the same, there was the earlier image before me,
the great tree of my life, reduced to a stump.

When they saw down a large tree,
they saw it up, as well.
I always expect the sawed–up tree
to look like a butchered ox,
but there is no red flesh,
no slabs of fat, no blood at all,
no empty chest cavity,
— if there’s no tree–disease, there is no empty torso,
just arms thrown wide, and that look of headlessness.
All the same, if someone would paint
a picture of the best section of a giant
(freshly–killed) catalpa tree, it would be
like one of the famous oil paintings
of a beef–critter’s hanging carcass
(Rembrandt and Soutine)
brush strokes aswirl on slaughtered wood,
wood swollen like muscle, muscle streaming with light /
light like living minerals /or powdered gold,
gold in a form that you could eat,
golden food for the conqueror of the tree /creation
that has sheltered whole families,
and who but the one devouring it,
can know if its flesh will be sweet or bitter?