Removal
This isn’t about the live oak outside my apartment that begins to slowly disappear one morning. This isn’t about the collection of tanned men who had chainsaws and a compact front end loader. Hanging by rope and rooftop, they start at the top, put down arms this wood octopus had spread over and between brick buildings, as if someday it could push itself free of the soil. This isn’t about the loud thuds severed branches make on my porch roof or the right balance between swearing and work. This isn’t about the workman, who hangs from the tree’s remaining branches, uses them as pulleys to let down sections slowly. His silent chainsaw dangles from his belt, the way someone might let keys dangle. This isn’t about the front-end loader’s scoop or its two metal fingers that close on tree limbs. This is not about its struggle in the mud, leaves, and sawdust, or the way it tears up now superfluous tree roots, the same roots I tripped over late one Friday night, tearing ankle ligaments on the way home from your house. This isn’t about the stump grinder that overheats every hour, a few tacit minutes suggests something of the tree might remain, before the cacophonous removal continues. No, this is about the new blank blue sky, I glare at dazed, through porch windows. It spreads sunsets over rooftops in slow procession. It’s about how a late afternoon thunderstorm fills mud tracks that say something big came and took it all away.