March 10, 2005
What demanded the uprooting of these cherry trees,
Eradicated with one tug from a hydraulic arm?
Who called for the orchard weeding,
Preparing the soil for another seeding?
What did the farmer hope to gain
By giving up this spring's certain fruit?
What flowers does he prefer his bees to pollinate?
One hundred, two hundred, rank and file, score by score
Recline on their branches on now unfrozen sod,
The snapped short root balls clean from the clods,
Dropped to earth when the steel claw released.
One sign offers cherry wood logs, cracked with seasoning,
As long as you promise to burn them under a local chimney.
You haul and you load.
His neighbor stacked his dumb harvest of wood in
Pyres of trees, high enough to cremate or bake clay,
Dry to the match's touch for he allowed
No sap to arise in the boles and green the branches,
Quicken twigs or squirt out shoots.
Now in the time of the culling of ashes,
Of emerald infestation of beetles that bore,
In this time of prophylactic deforestation,
What demanded the razing of this cherry plantation?
The grape arbors of Berrien are leafier than Napa,
The vinters do not count and limit the buds as severly
The way winemakers must in Sonoma,
And yet Berrien grapes gush forth an enchanting decantible.
In another field, I see the crews postholing now,
A fresh plot free of phylloxera.
The crops are rotated every century; check again but wait 100 years.
I see migrants driving the posts and hanging training wires,
Drawing them taut and parallel to the undulating earth.
When the bottles of the first cuvee are filled,
Save a bottle for one hundred years, one hundred years
As dry and as lonely as a dessicated cherry bole.
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