A crew of seven showed up in a truck
hauling a skid steer loader and a steel maw
on a trailer that ate logs open-jawed,
leaving piles of fragrant dust in the street.
First went the canopy that shed a shower
of brown leaves each November.
Next the stubbed-off crown, and the crook
where the trunk forked, where one night
last spring the moon got caught in the lace
of newly minted whirlybirds. Then the saw
signed its hieroglyphic lines across the bole,
cut out a deep wedge from a foot above the base.
Its girth half gone, the listing column crashed
with a thud that shook the house. And now, below,
a network notes the loss, then quietly regrows.