The Planting
For My Father
We walked together in the park,
the two of us, and dug the sapling up.
You gently cupped the dangling veins of
maple roots in the vastness of your hands.
We planted it beside the fence out back:
spaded deep for room and hold, crumpled dirt,
propped it straight, firmed it down and watered.
We smiled through rain and sun
and grew together for a while.
Though you died that brutal fall, the maple thrived,
climbed higher year by year to a golden
vantage point from where it eyed
the summer field beyond the alleyway,
rooftops red and blue, brown and gray,
and children strolling sidewalks with their fathers.
Half a century since that planting.
Not so very long, and though
a little bowed in spots,
a sturdiness remains.
I know our souls
are in its branches now,
I know the firmness of your planting.