A day and night of wind and rain:
the big oaks fall; we hear each snap,
each crash into the weed-filled pond.
All morning long wood chippers
and chainsaws scream, turning
fallen panoplies of leaves and limbs
to mounds of dark brown mulch.
Tree trunks, delimbed and cut
to length, now line the borders
of the Hamden Land Trust trails.
The hawk has lost its perch.
Our names and dates are gone.
In the backyard, we clip
and prune the wood plants: the lilacs,
the rhododendron and the overgrown
forsythia behind the garage.
And while the monarchs circle
in a whirl of orange, black and white,
on “wings of fire,” we trim
the bushes and edge the lawn.
Old enough to know
what gives our backyard wings,
we let the milkweed grow.
BOB MESZAROS taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. During the 70s and 80s his poems appeared in a number of literary journals such as En Passant and Voices International. In the year 2000 he began teaching part time at Quinnipiac University, and he once again began to submit his work for publication. His poems have appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, Concho River Review, The Woven Tale Press, The Hungry Chimera, Naugatuck River Review, The Courtship of the Winds and other literary journals. He has fully retired from teaching and is now preoccupied with his poetry and his three grandchildren.
