Best Luckie Poems
The city is dotted in little wooded sanctuaries. One on the corner of Forsyth and Luckie, a pair of twins on Hill St. If you’re lucky sometimes you can glimpse a group of four or more. I know of one but that’s a well kept secret, you’ll have to find it on your own.
I’m not entirely sure who planted these little arbor islands. I would imagine the people who paved gray runways and built buildings of burnt brick and spotted marble placed a few in a moment of guilt, built up stone by stone until the weight became too heavy to bear. So they brought a few strong trees back into the concrete mire.
You have to admire their wooden resolution though, they persevere in their 4x4 plots of land filled with intractable mulch, dry, hard dirt and a layer of plastic and styrofoam topsoil. Their branches scrape the second story windows, their emaciated fingers attempt to push through grout and stone. They reach with eager, upturned palms for open air.
I was admiring the white, spring blooms today when men came with silver spears and saw-tooth blades to trim the branches on DeKalb. The tree’s wooden fingers severed at the joints, veins bleeding sap onto the once clean blades. As the final limb fell, time cut back 6 months, I couldn’t help but laugh.