The Viburnum
Parched grass protests the passage of my boots the day after the first freeze warning. It’s been a dry fall and the trees are giving up their leaves without a show – all but the viburnum, as if determined to bookend the most drab summer of my life with beauty.
The top remains lopsided from where a giant branch fell and set the transformer on fire last year. My lover suggests we prune it to balance the crown, but I know she only says that because my parents like things tidy.
Two women wearing fluorescent green vests study the pole, take videos of the tree. I’ve left my online meeting to venture hello. “Anything I need to do?”
I don’t admit I’m worried for the viburnum tucked up against the pole. I’m afraid they’ll say the whole tree has to go.
They’re just the advance team and promise to contact me before the linemen shut off the power.
Click, click. More photos, now of the tree’s base. I imagine chaining myself to the trunk when the power company comes. You can’t take away the only color in my life.
As they crunch back down the hill, I remember how, years ago, two tulip poplars threatened the same electric pole. A purple crape myrtle was in the way. “Rejuvenation pruning.” The foreman explained what he would do.
It had been warped, the main trunk half-rotted at eye level, leaves spotted with mildew in the shade of the poplars. The foreman cut it even with the ground so his crew could lay down the trunks of the larger trees beside what I thought would be its grave.
My eyes swing to it – taller than the viburnum now, the leaves just beginning to fade gold in the full sun of its second life.
M. Frost is a queer writer in Maryland whose work has appeared in Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly and other pieces in The Hopkins Review, Little Patuxent Review, Rumen, and other venues. https://mfrostwords.com