The Day..

The Day the Lot Was Cleared

The day the lot was cleared was dark.

Storm clouds sagged with water weight.

Tree trunks were saturated black

beside their wet green leaves.

I sat on the couch facing the picture window

watching the work across the road, and sobbed

a storm of my own, for the loss of the scotch broom,

huckleberry, fir trees and maples, all the density

of wild growth that I had idly admired

until I had it memorized, most of the spoiled

treescape and all of the underbrush

now being pushed along the muddy ground

by a loud, yellow Caterpillar tractor.

I didn't know then about the couple

coming from California to build their superior

suburban home, doting on lawn, cursing our dog,

being visited in summer by grown daughters with

beehive hairdos, arriving in big beige Buicks,

pasty-faced girls grinding cigarettes under pointy-toed

shoes into the oil-spot-free concrete drive of the father

and mother, current husbands carrying

beer for the family picnic. We'd hear

the wild, only son who'd turn up sometimes

was a jailbird named Jackie

who specialized in writing bad checks, until

the day he'd bite the old man's nose,

then drive away,

drunk,

before the sheriff came.

But it was bad enough already.

I didn't need to know any of that

the day the lot was cleared.

Carol Colin, 1994-2002