Today we trimmed the Mango Pine
at the request of a new neighbor who
needs a bit more sunlight in the
lower left corner of his yard.
There he has planted tomatoes and sukuma,
thirsty rows between the legs
of the banana family clustered at the fence,
watching us while we swing.
.
The man hired to do the work carries his panga
with lazy confidence,
the way my children wield their stick swords
and cardboard battle axes.
He shimmies up the tree, gripping muscled limbs
with bare thighs
and I feel a pang of strange envy
as he grazes past places I have regarded
almost every day that we have lived in this house
but have never touched.
.
The branches fall quietly under
strong, neat blows,
mottled brown skin exposing
white pulp bone,
a clean crack and rush of dark green
lowering itself down to the ground gently.
The sky beyond the tree is now
so suddenly naked,
rain rinsed blue pushing through bare branches
quite pleased, I think, with the shock of itself.
.
The teasing detritus that used to wash up
on this shade-soaked shore –
slim striped feather,
yellow threaded leaf,
waxy black pod –
now litters this corner of the compound
like the contents of a cave.
.
My pirate daughters raid this newly upside-down world
once kept only for drongos and mousebirds,
pilfering with exquisite care a filigree nest,
empty and perfect,
tracing the calligraphy of ant highways scrawled across
fallen temple beams,
and amassing armfuls of leaves
into pyres bigger than themselves,
each one dry and smooth
like a million dollar bills.
Far From My Mountain 