by Meg Freer
Ashes
ASH TREE REMOVALS.
The condo notice shouts without preamble:
eleven dead or dying trees will come down.
Ashen faced, I walk to the wild border to pay my respects.
The trunks stand like totems waiting to be carved.
Once the most planted urban tree in America,
the ashes all fall down to the borer,
emerald larvae creeping in through diamond bark crevices.
Is this the price of popularity? Like Elm Street without elms?
On Moon Road, another ash no longer provides shade
its conversation with the apple orchard interrupted.
Planted by the families evicted for a national park.
You can see their graves from the ash stump.
We called the tree shaman too late. He just shook his head.
Terminal.
Woodpeckers plucked borers like chocolate chips.
The tree’s last joinery was to the food pantry,
turning to ashes in someone’s wood stove.
Jean Janicke is an economist, coach, and writer. She lives in Washington, DC, United States. Her work has appeared in Green Ink Poetry, Paddler Press, and Honeyguide Literary Magazine.
Meg Freer is an award-winning poet and piano teacher in Ontario, where she enjoys the outdoors year-round. She has published two poetry chapbooks and holds a Graduate Certificate with Distinction in Creative Writing from Toronto’s Humber School of Writers. She keeps visual images in her head for a long time and her inspiration for poetry and photography often comes from intriguing juxtapositions, clusters and angles in both the human and the natural world. Highlights of her published work can be found on her Facebook page.