Hackberry Tree Lifts Car Into The Air, SAITAMA, JAPAN
Spit out by a bird, a seed
lands in a junkyard in Japan
years before anyone
notices, before one of the workers
sees a tuft of green beneath
a nickel box Honda.
Even then, nobody expected anything but weeds.
The young tree, knowing nothing
of the thirty-some shades of rust or
gravity’s quiet, oppressive hand, felt
the sun through busted floorboards
and ruptured right on through. Oh,
how it wore that car like a necklace!
The dented fender pointed up
and east, as if ascending an imaginary
mountain. The drooping tires hanging
from the branches, graceful as moss.
The workers, who
were used to seeing things die
built a fence around the car
that was now a tree
and declared it a sacred monument,
a reminder that even broken clocks
are right twice a day, and the holy
flowers in mud, flower
in mud.
