Walnut & Mulberry

 My big black walnut tree is gone--the storm took it.

The stump is something like the white skin where a ring recently was. I'd like to have a funeral procession but I lack coffin, instruments, mourners. I would like to dance for my lost companion, but am denied. Being old is like being a kid again, in the worst way. I nag: Watch your step don't fall careful with that don't drop it. I goggle at the world and the thousand things I cannot do. My mulberry tree was thirty feet tall. Now it sends up suckers, keen to be what it was, again. I can reach out my hand and touch the top. Watch where the root cracked the walk. Look where you're walking don't trip better sit, crack your knees catch your breath. I'm the same inside, what happened to this flesh, this life? Like the mulberry, it was cut down. Like the back walnut--the storm took it.