THE CIRCLE AND THE GRASS
By Jane Kenyon
    1
Last night the wind came into the yard,
and wrenched the biggest branch
from the box elder, and threw it down
--no, that was not what it wanted---
and kept going.

    2
Eighty years ago, someone
planted the sapling,
midway between porch and fence,
and later that day,
looked down from the bedroom
on the highest branch.

The woman who stood at the window
could only imagine shade,
and the sound of leaves moving overhead,
like so many whispered conversations.

    3
I keep busy in the house,
but I hear the high drone
of the saw, and the drop in pitch
as chain cuts into bark.

I clean with the vacuum
so I won’t have to listen,
finally the man goes for lunch,
leaving the house quiet
as a face paralyzed by strokes.

     4
All afternoon I hear the blunt
shudder of limbs striking the ground.
The tree drops its arms
like someone abandoning a conviction:
--perhaps I have been wrong all this time—

When it’s over, there is nothing left
but a pale circle on the grass,
dark in the center, like an eye