Like prairie wildflowers
she loathed the tree,
obstructing her view of
the pyrotechnics of the sun,
the rising balloon and bubble
of the Nebraska moon.
But she had not the heart
to cut it down. There was
something headstrong and hurt
about it, like her.
Each year new growth,
only a few scraggly branches
struggling in the heated breeze
of the plains, extended
the slow, verdant inching
toward the sky.
The tree was here to stay,
to use up its allotted time,
to try to be, well, beautiful
and earnest,
as she tried to be.
There are prairie flowers enough,
she said to herself.
One tree will not break me.
Many times, as she sat in its shade
in the summer dusk,
she looked up into its branches
and saw there a different moon,
a different sun.
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