The twenty-first day of May (two days late)

He insisted on planting a tree
for his first grandchild
in his wife's garden
and heaving the root ball into the hole
alone his wife
watching from the living room
window his legs bowing around the weight
panting knew this was as close
as he'd ever got
to birth

The tree flourished
the way the tumour in the brain
of the over-the-fence neighbour
flourished
and when the leaves
that reached impertinent for his sunlight
all the unfurling fingers
pointing at him
the anger of trespass
the overlooking overhanging
made him wrench off
a branch the way you might
wrench off
an arm

The next week his wife tsked
on the bedroom phone
he's sick! as she reported on
the rough edges of the torn thing
tossed over the fence
into her yard
but you know how your father is
he won't say anything
then went quiet
as their son described a schoolyard
incident
the hard edges of his son’s cast
and the sudden
anger
of boys
laughing a little
the wan light of the emergency
room the chorus of grunting
sighing sick
a few days off now

The next year he came out to find it
stripped
the winter-sick lips of deer
shredding the limbs bare
all for the glazed shoots
the goddamn
tenderness of leaves
springing from bud
after a long drifting winter
after that it was blight
and apples worm-eaten even
on the highest branches
and there were more phone calls
strange bruises
shadows under the eyes
his son less buoyant
as he described how they always got
to the front of the line
at emergency
as soon as
they saw his son’s
face

By year five it was clear:
the tree hadn’t staked out a domain
wouldn’t branch out into this sky
these breezes: it's sick she noted
every day for a month
and when she finally sent him out with the axe
he stood under the spindly branches
of the tree
that cast shadows over his kin
like the hanging trees at crossroads
but even so he dreaded
the bleeding seep
of the cut
his dread
raw
all of him listening for
the tones
of the long-distance
ring