Another Tree

If a tree dies, plant another one.

Linnaeus

We sat in the yard where his house had burned.

Only I had seen the shadowed negative,

the X-ray of his brain. He squinted,

one eye too sensitive to the sun.

His right hand lay useless on his lap.

Optimism all that was left to him,

all of his grace.

For him, I'd rescued and rebuilt the place,

made a new house, planted another tree,

the little mimosa now two stories high.

In a few weeks, he'd be gone,

such was the rapaciousness of the cells,

so defenseless the nervous system.

This was the yard, this the driveway,

where one summer of Saturdays, he'd gathered

a minyan to say Kaddish for his mother.

He admired every thing living; he loved

the mimosa, the pan-sized hibiscus,

the woodpecker whose staccato knocks

are the punctuation of this memory.

I held his good left hand, still the dreamer,

"Look, what a miracle this hand is-"'

he said, "seventy years I hardly used it,

and now, the things it's learning to do!"

We looked together at what was left,

at what was growing.