Big Trampoline

            I miss our sundays at the park by the lake

            With the motherly banyans in more than one place

            The indigenous palms that could bend and not break

            And the ones that had trunks like papiermâché

            It would come unglued when they started to flake

            And the baby manatees that swam there by mistake 

            Swimming right up to the sad little shoreline of clay

            Considering their options and then swimming away

            Afraid of the tangled ladies laying in wait

            They were just some old mangroves, and nothing to hate

            I miss these beauties like the leaves and their sway

            And the people who lived there like humorless gods

            I don’t miss them or their shimmering façades

            The towering fortresses that kept us at odds

            Purveyors of solitude, a circle of frauds

           

            They decided that the trees were obstructing their view

            So through much litigation and reddening hues

            They changed how the word “preservation” was used

            The bulldozers came and made everything new

            I hate new things when the motives aren’t true

            So the next time we have our sundays together

            We should go back to the park where the beauties were gathered

            And return something old to the glistening water

            And honor the ghosts of arboreal mothers

            We’ll fly in the face of the powers unseen

            And then we’ll make love on their big trampoline