After a student tells me her allergies are due to botanical sexism, I look it up
and yes, after the elms all died,
or most of them did, someone decided:
female trees just make a mess —
seeds and fruit and all that juice —
so cities began to plant only male trees.
Growers bred new cultivars
avoiding troublesome lady
or hermaphrodite trees;
they bred boys, boys, boys all day.
Or else, faster, they cloned them.
Cleaner streets without females.
No need for the stench
a girl gingko releases
when she’s in heat. No need
for tree babies. Let the wind
clean up the rest.
All male trees make is pollen.
Male trees all make pollen.
Male trees: all that pollen,
and the wind can’t carry it all,
so it stays in our noses,
eyes, and throats. We wonder,
this year, if it’s pollen
or something else. Our eyes
keep watering.
We cry like little girls.
* * * * *
Summertime
Eventually friends said, come
to dinner outside, and eventually
we said yes. S. was five and excited,
and when we reached the front door,
turned suddenly, walking straight
away to safety. I went and sat with her
on the ground until we were both
ready. Then it was sunny and new
in the backyard, the table was set
so beautifully and K. said work was
nonstop but good and Y. told us how
he had maybe almost died — not of that —
but was fine now, and we were relieved
and worried and relieved, and we ate
and asked each other about our best newest
takeout places and nature walks, and L. described
her favorite class, and R. played the guitar
and A. let her little sister cling close
and there was a whole vegetable garden
that had grown since the last time we visited,
that’s how long it had been: a whole head of
butter lettuce in the ground, leaves green
as any green, rippled like a lush little mountain range
seen from a high overlook, when you stand
still for a minute and catch your breath
and take a long drink of cool water, and try
to take a real picture, then a mental one, and then
you keep going, somehow, over the mountain.