What They Did With the Yard

The shutters are gray now. They were white.

The new family put a trampoline

along the side, and in the light

of a Tuesday afternoon it gleams

the way things gleam when they're new

and belong to someone else.

I didn't stop. I just drove through

slowly enough to see the shelf

of grass where the maple used to stand,

re-seeded now, re-leveled, clean.

They took it down and smoothed the land

and planted something in between

the stump and where the fence begins—

I couldn't see what. Something small.

The stump itself is still there, rings

exposed, wide as a dining hall

table, pale as fresh-cut pine.

I could count the years from the road.

I didn't. I just crossed the line

at the end of the block and slowed

at the light and sat there

with the blinker going, left, left, left.

I don't know what I wanted there.

Not the house. Just the tree. The weight of it.