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.
Recommended
Poetry | Katie Kemple
Feast or
Feast or
Poetry | Charles Hensler
Meeting My Future Old Man
Meeting My Future Old Man
Poetry | Asheley Nova Navarro
Idolatry—Gamze Ergüven's Mustang
Idolatry—Gamze Ergüven's Mustang