The 48th Street Oak

Years ago,
you bought a house for a tree.
A great sprawling vine-wrapped oak that hung over the roof,
raining pollen in the spring time and casting shade in the summer,
making the yard rustle like old, dry paper through the autumn.

The years passed and sloughed off the seasons one by one.
The tree grew. So did we all.

I spent my summers sprawled in the shade behind that house,
with the pages of whatever book I was reading rustling in the same breeze that made the branches wave and the vines dance.

A few weeks ago you told me you’re selling the house
because of that tree.

These days, it’s too frightening to think of a branch falling off of that decrepit oak and crushing the place your bed occupies in space.
It’s too burdensome to think of trimming that tree and removing its discarded leaf litter and sneezing your way through the pollen each year.
In your old(er) age, everything is “too” something.

So you listed the house with a realtor who describes our tree as “majestic” and the home you made as “meticulously maintained”, and you’re moving to a place where the trees and the houses are all younger than I am, and the neighbors are all older than you are, older than you’ll ever feel – and somehow, that all just seems lonely.