An Arbor

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The world’s a world of trouble, your mother must 
  have told you 
 that. Poison leaks into the basements

and tedium into the schools. The oak 
  is going the way
 of the elm in the upper Midwest—my cousin

earns a living by taking the dead ones 
  down.
 And Jason’s alive yet, the fair-

haired child, his metal crib next 
  to my daughter’s.
  Jason is one but last saw light five months ago

and won’t see light again.

  · 

Leaf against leaf without malice 
 or forethought,
 the manifold species of murmuring

harm. No harm intended, there never is. 
 The new
 inadequate software gets the reference librarian

fired. The maintenance crew turns off power one 
 weekend
 and Monday the lab is a morgue: fifty-four

rabbits and seventeen months of research. 
 Ignorance loves 
  as ignorance does and always

holds high office. 

  ·

Jason had the misfortune to suffer misfortune 
  the third
  of July. July’s the month of hospital ro-

tations; on holiday weekends the venerable 
  stay home.
  So when Jason lay blue and inert on the table

and couldn’t be made to breathe for three-and-a-
 quarter hours, 
 the staff were too green to let him go.

The household gods have abandoned us to the gods 
 of juris-
 prudence and suburban sprawl. The curve

of new tarmac, the municipal pool, 
 the sky at work
 on the pock-marked river, fatuous sky,

the park where idling cars, mere yards 
 from the slide
 and the swingset, deal beautiful oblivion in nickel

bags: the admitting room and its stately drive, 
 possessed 
 of the town’s best view.

  ·

And what’s to become of the three-year-old brother? 
 When Jason was found 
 face down near the dogdish—it takes

just a cupful of water to drown—
  his brother stood still
 in the corner and said he was hungry

and said that it wasn’t his fault. 
 No fault.
 The fault’s in nature, who will

without system or explanation 
  make permanent
 havoc of little mistakes. A natural

mistake, the transient ill-will we define 
  as the normal
 and trust to be inconsequent,

by nature’s own abundance soon absorbed. 

  ·

Oak wilt, it’s called, the new disease. 
  Like any such
 contagion—hypocrisy in the conference room,

flattery in the halls—it works its mischief mostly 
  unremarked. 
 The men on the links haven’t noticed

yet. Their form is good. They’re par. 
  The woman who’s
 prospered from hating ideas loves causes

instead. A little shade, a little firewood. 
  I know
 a stand of oak on which my father’s

earthly joy depends. We’re slow 
  to cut our losses.

© Michael Rosen