The Chinese Elm

is gone, cut down
by the buyers, another death
in a row of them this year. It’s
their house now, I tell my old neighbor,
who calls me, distraught, on the day
the tree comes down, but that’s, of course,
the crux, not consolation. The Chinese Elm
was over one hundred years old, the last
in the tree line of the farmer’s field
where developers moved in; I told
the buyers this—showed them
the arborist’s papers—but like Frost’s obstinate
neighbor, the husband clung to his belief—where
I had seen miracle, beauty, shelter, he saw
only danger. The azaleas and rhododendrons
are gone as well, a large rock
resting where they flourished.
Memento mori, I think, a mockery
of all my efforts to preserve
time and place, my gardens
now undone, like so much else.