Before the wind takes it. Before the voles make a home of it.

Or a trunk-borer.

Before the orioles weave one nest too many.

Or later, in December, the snow weighs heavily for the thundering branch

to go under.

And looking ahead again

to next summer, the tail end

of a hurricane, whipping the leaves into their fury and filling the choked-up

gutters.

Before anything else can happen. Call Richard and his webb

of chainsaws.

His hundred-foot mechanical ladder. His throne

of a bucket.

He rises in.

One branch-to-another.

Opening a hole to the sky. Dropping the dead,

the queen box-elder.

—  Gary Margolis, Cornwall