As winter melted

springtime rose

And, one day, all the lofty severed stump scar space

Lit up! with sudden chartreuse life

a tender crown of vibrant baby leaves

awash in brilliant vernal sun

Outstretched fresh, ecstatic

to tremble in each errant bright-lit breeze

*

Death sentence, with its firm words

about the hopeless, helpless stump

its predetermined fate

remained in place

Stark black and white

Nailed through the living bark

into the living wood

*

That final summer month

September comes

and tree is oddly beautiful

Like trees that line the streets back in Versailles

Our foolish foreign eyes had been so shocked

outraged, even

first time we saw

that brutal Gallic pruning

Each tall, slim, equidistant tree

hacked back to trunk, essentially

But, as we would witness later on

all of them renewing, leafing out

in slender soft green beauty

every spring

*

So, no surprise in what has happened here

Predictable, returns of verdant life

the close-clung emerald crown achieved

Different kind of beauty, beauty nonetheless

Still, city's verdict does remain

nailed deep into the east side of the tree

hardly faded after all these months

*

Until today — today the nailed-in warning's gone

Gone totally, can't even see where it once was

no other notice in its place — reprieve, perhaps?

Afraid of hope, and yet I kind of do

a bit, enough that for the first time

I thought to take a photograph

Of this strange pretty living tree.