Blight

We know from Hesiod that Zeus fashioned mankind for the Age of Bronze out of the ash tree
and that these warlike people lived on until the Flood of Deucalion covered mountains.
In the Year of a Lord 2016,
Chalara and the Emerald Ash Borer may make those sacred trees extinct
or practically so, much as the elms disappeared from Europe decades ago
excepting ten thousand here or there—
though once they were planted atop the graves of heroes and withered only
when they grew tall enough to gaze upon the desolate ruin of Troy,
and there were millions more planted by the breath of the winds
and Ptelea the Hamadryad was not yet the pitiable husk she would become.

She had all the ass that the gods ever gave a woman
but it was a damned shame whenever her mind came out her mouth.
Eavesdropping on her conversations was perilous,
as she would quickly alter the arc of thought from television programs
to the things she genuinely believed about the world.
She was a woman who did not know the meaning of the word “inevitable”
and had opinions that crashed like a tornado through a forest,
but I was often distracted by the rhinestone fleurs-de-lis
fastened onto the back pockets of her jeans so I got along with her well enough
except the day she was singing pop country music loudly
and I spat out the most offensive insult I know,
telling her that she was lucky she was pretty.

It’s a hell of a world where creatures like she or I get to eat and drink and fuck
while the nymphs are quietly dying, all because some asshole a hundred years ago
brought the spores or eggs of poison carelessly across an ocean.

In the country of my birth,
our trees do not have souls.
We have the beetles anyway.