The Remnant of the Trees

She swept the trampoline 
with the big blue push-broom.

We leave it out down there so the kids don’t have to get into the wood-framed storage shed, which still has no electricity and sometimes shelters wasps and larger beasts.

She found it where it often is – 
beneath the big hackberry,
beside the galvanized pipe frame 
on a drying dune of sticks and leaves -
detritus gathered there in that darn low spot
by the silent slowing of the last flash flood.

She is still not quite as tall as the broom is long.

As they all do – did we teach them that – 
she tossed the broom on the mat,
its stiff-black bristles poking and peeking 
through ragged holes and rusted springs,
before she climbed the crumbling cream 
and dark-moldy vinyl chair, removed her shoes, 
and swept.

After she jumped for bit
(and spoke in whispers to a hidden world), 
we went for a bike ride around the block, 
through the gravel in the neighbor’s empty lot, 
backtracked to the monkey bars at the elementary school, 
drove around in circles on their basketball court 
and the parking lot full of empty moms' parking spaces,
then returned home.
We rode faster than usual and didn’t stay long in any one place.

We kicked the leaves away
from the french-door threshold,
pushed our bikes inside the guest house,
and hung our helmets on the bars.
She went straight down to the trampoline.
And, just like she promised,
Grandma came out and joined her,
 shoes off and everything.
They laughed and jumped together 
 until she had to sit down. Grandma.

They lay on their backs and pointed
to a perfect blue February sky,
to, way-up, a jet and its straight contrail,
to a white heron gliding barely above the branches
of the big oaks and elms,
to the dying hackberry
with the hollow yellow trunk 
where the family of squirrels live 
when the hawks will let them.

We soaked it in. We remembered.
We talked about when the big branch fell,
(the one that held the old blue-rope swing,
not the new blue-seated rope one; it’s doing fine),
and how were we going to trim such a giant
 of its many dangling dead branches 
without someone getting hurt.

Then we went inside. 
She got her coat and backpack together,
climbed into the recliner with her Grandma,
and while we waited for her dad to get home,
I told her we were leaving.

_______________________
Isaiah 10:19

The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few
that a child can write them down. (ESV)