Immortal Elegy
Grandpa visited us during Spring
in his white suit, straw hat.
We pounced on the hat
the way a bird examines a foreign nest.
From afar he resembled the trees’ blossoms.
As a young man, I know, he used to uproot apple trees –
he’d embrace the trunk and methodically, slowly
with lulling grunts (time itself – all that he had –
lay on the grass nearby with a jacket rolled under its head)
would sever the link with the soil,
handed the tree to the earth still alive.
The little forest was doomed.
At that place now is a plaza with dancing tiles.
The time and the forest gone before him.