Noon
West of Boston and 128
Mid-March
Noon
Lying on my sister Pam’s sloping lawn
Under the Winter sun
The grass awaiting the Spring to green__
Beyond the lawn
A steep descent into a gully
An Eastern pine rises from below
My eyeball estimate
Over a hundred feet in the air
Over two hundred years old
Its seed birth back in the 18th Century
Older than me
At 72
We share that oldness
I
From 1952
A 20th Century Man
I’M A TWENTIETH CENTURY MAN
Kinks
1971___
March 2025
I rise from the lawn
Carefully climb down to the tree
Stand under its shade
The trunk bare of branches to the boughs atop.
I hug the pine
Three arm length in width
My nose to the bark
Breathe the scent
Northern forests from here to the St. Lawrence River___
Here beneath the Eastern Pine
Pine needles underfoot
How has this giant survived the centuries of American greed?__
Same as me
My sister Pam come to the edge of the lawn
I look up and see__
1957
St. Joseph Street
Jamaica Plains
My older brother and I
6 and 5
Stand outside Nana’s three-decker
Arnold’s Arboreteum across the Jamaicaway
A station wagon arrives
My father at the wheel
My mother carrying a baby
Pam
Sixty-seven years ago__
2025
None of the three old
We are alive
21st Century Man and woman
21st Century Tree
Together
Onward into the future
From the distant past and the now___