When men from the electric company
cut down a tree I named The Churchyard Tree,
because it grew on the property line separating
my backyard from the churchyard, I wanted
to destroy their chainsaws and heave the men
back into their trucks. I assumed workers,
suited in padded, blue vests, yellow hardhats,
and the intent to murder beauty, didn’t have one
thought about the scar they would leave in my life.

The tree, though gnarled, twisted, deformed,
a monument to the grotesque, wrecked the sky
with its audacious reach upward. I would say
ugly, but it wasn’t. It was nature’s anomaly,
three trunks braided together like seasoned lovers
in a ménage a trois. It was a stunning example
of the divine misfit, a mangled body of bark and
creation’s apology.

I felt betrayed by those workmen. They loaded
the tree’s logs into the truck bed, raked twigs
into several piles, drove away like official
executioners. I stared at the stump, the brown,
raw stump, the unforgivable injury of a tree
that taught me to love what is good about
deviating from the normal.

 

R. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University, taught for Columbus City Schools for thirty years. OCTELA, the Ohio Council of Teachers of English, named Nik Macioci the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. Nik is the author of twenty-three books.