The Summer Sycamore

The great tree loomed
Over the neighborhood
Its roots tunneled beneath
Houses, beneath streets.

Its gracious shade
Protected children at play
Birds nested
In its high branches.

But construction workers
Cut through the great roots.
Drought blanketed the town In dust and baking heat.
No water came up
Feeding the great branches

One by one, they began to die
Lost their leaves, gave no shade.
Woodpeckers drilled,
Bugs munched and tunneled.

A great limb, thirty six inches
Across its mighty diameter
Let go, and came down crashing
Came down crashing on a house
A little blue house that had stood
One hundred year in its shade.

A once beautiful tree stands dying In the fierce heat of August
Surrounded by dead grass and dust.


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