Treatise to My Old Magnificent Maples and Sweetgums

Treatise to My Old Magnificent Maples and Sweetgums

Before I lost the old house to the wind
I mowed through December’s leaf litter,

I had six trees, split between Sweetgums  and Red Maples—
each the width of our family of three holding hands. 

But this last season, the leaves thickened with refusal,
clogging the blades, forcing me to rake a clearing for the tarp 

My autistic brother and I leaf blew and dragged thirteen tarps to the curb, 
where the county’s foliage truck would vacuum them up that week.

That night the rain came and flooded the basement—
where my brother used to live.  

By the next day the leaf pile smelled musty.
The basement had begun to mold.

After the seventh dusk, my father performed the precaution—
my brother, bearing the envelope, was delivered to my sister.

Soon the winds came,  and
the house and trees were lost.  

The only leaves that blew onto that homeless, treeless lot
were from the houses of those who rebuilt.  

For  five full  years there was cancer and death, 
until my  brother finally returned 

to the new house built 
on a treeless lot.