Upon the Slaughter of a Tree

I started when I heard the crash,
Like a collapsing of the roof
Over my child's bedroom.

At the corner of my yard,
Where my land and my neighbor's met,
Grew a young tree, a walnut.

The green tractor, with its heavy bucket
Had pushed down the handsome tree,
Pulling its roots up from the soil,

And it lay on its side like death,
As in the moments when you first learn a loved one has passed.
Incomprehensibly,

I surveyed the tragedy
Of farmer and tree,
Not the last victim to fall on the barren hillside,

Replaced by stalks of corn
That grow as greenly as dollar bills,
Or the John Deere tractor

That raised the tree high in its bucket
And carried the tree I had loved over harvested fields
Late in the fall.