Arbor Day
There it is on the calendar
near the end of April,
but does anyone still
celebrate it?
Almost sixty years ago,
in elementary school,
they used to send us home
with saplings—maple
or apple perhaps—
their small root balls
wrapped in burlap.
If, in my excitement,
I’d given more thought
to where I planted them—
in the middle of the yard
one year, another
next to the barn—
and my father hadn’t mown
each one of them down,
I wonder how big those
maples would have grown
and what those apples
would taste like now.
Jeffrey Harrison is the author of seven books of poetry, including Into Daylight, (Tupelo, 2014), winner of the Dorset Prize, and Between Lakes (Four Way, 2020). His next book, The Afterlife of Fish, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2027. He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation, among other honors. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, as well as in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize volumes, and other anthologies.
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