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 joins us
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__
Now 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___
Foto from Famouth Foresides, Maine 1959
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