Dismantling the Birches

for James Lasdun

'Topped, dropped & chipped 2 dead white birch trees'
reads the bill arriving one week later.
The damage? 'Labor & Equipment - $250,'
though it's no sure bargain: blithe empty air
now all that's left of what once stood, who knows,
a lifetime? a century? , their tall, swaying might
reduced to firewood we'll burn this winter.

Still, it was time. The birches too near the house,
one windy night a heavy limb broke loose,
waking us with a thunk so loud we thought
the end of sleep had come, our roof done in
and leaking through November's bony cold
until next morning workers broke the news:
nothing for it, those trees were coming down.

Summer. Morning. A locust's rising whine,
the day a promise caught in each chuckling leaf,
as a boy I loved their white thrusting shoots
rising like a massive V outside my window,
each trunk's diameter twice my skinny arm across,
the scarred papery bark a sheet inscribed
with twists and leanings, weather written in.

How many summers had they seen? What kites
had disemboweled flight among their branches?
And who could know what kind of spell or luck
had let them grow so tall, lightning blasts
and blight, drought and winter gales, the gamut
of experience as like to strike them down
as nurture lasting reach into a pale blue sky.

I blink my eyes, but yes, they're really gone,
leaving behind a golden sawdust sweet
with desolation, its smell the pungent tang
of a chainsaw gnawing wood, the acrid oily buzz
lopping off a branch as if dismembering a doll
naked with abuse, as the saw's last throaty chug
digs and burrows, mad for the meaty girth.

Absence now becomes them, or at least
it must: sawdust, wood chips, and firewood
soon vanishing as well. Meanwhile, the view
has opened, and with it a landscape appears,
unseen before, yet obviously always there,
iron grey in autumn, a stillness loud with geese
on their necessary flight above the trees.