The Sycamore
Dan Campion
They took the plane tree down last week. I think
it must have stood there since the Black Hawk War,
near Davenport Street by the red-brick church.
It left behind a vacancy of sky
as broad as its green shade. Apparently
the hazard was too great to let it stand
another stormy spring. Not mine to judge
the wisdom of it. I’ll just miss the tree.
Who’ll take responsibility? Not I.
My job is to observe, record, and store
up images, convert them into ink,
and when a draft is done resume the search.
Who, scribe or sawyer, is the purer drudge?
The sycamore is down that stood there, grand.
About the Author
Dan Campion is the author of the poetry books Calypso (Syncline Press), A Playbill for Sunset and Star Anchors (both from Ice Cube Press), and The Mirror Test (MadHat Press) and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). Dan’s poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines.