Someone wisely planted, many years ago
A mango seed
And hopefully
Lived to see it grow
Reaching up to touch the birds
To offer them a haven
A nesting place
Where often joyful praises can be heard.
It cast a shadow on my house
A cool respite from wilting rays
Allowed for parsley, dill and thyme
To flourish in its shade.
Majestically it covered half the block with cloak of green
And scattered mangos in the street
Our hunger to assuage
As parents are, a paradigm of generosity.
That tree gave my little town a sense of propriety
A monument to how the world
In future times will be
Protected and uplifted by enlightened regency.
Then came the ubiquitous cable company
To trim back all its boughs
So as not to disturb
The transmission of their foolery.
Then along came maintenance, tired of sweeping up
The luscious fruit
So deemed the tree must be no more
A diktat most expedient and abrupt.
Its roots had not initiated in my plot of earth
But in the neighbors’, who
At the time it made me cry
I don’t know why, deferred.
So, they started hacking, hacking, hacking,
To the bone I felt the blade
First they sliced the highest tier
Then the next, kept hacking
Until assured that life was gone, the enemy o’rtaken!
That never once again
A mango would appear
To blight the concrete surface or with progress interfere.
Against all probabilities that feisty patriarch
Kept pushing, pushing, pushing
Out the tender leaves, so
They stripped him of his bark, left him naked in the breeze.
Now he has grown pale and dry, can only feed the fire.
I put a curtain on the window
So as not to see
This statement of the rise and fall of human sensibility.