The Last Confederate Tree Tells All
       

Cannons along the roadside
hold the last line of fortification
from 140 years ago. They seem

even more ancient, as if pulled
from depths of the sea; smaller after a century
of rain, moss covered. You can climb up

and have your picture taken,
follow their line of aim—traffic,
a stoplight, the condo's fourth floor.

Right now, in Richmond, Virginia,
The Last Confederate Tree is waiting
for the speech we will inscribe on it, balanced

on sawhorses, barkskin shucked
aside, where the knife is poised—
the tree meant nothing for years, but then

it kept on living,
even as the world it was born in
died slowly, still, it was only a tree

until a hurricane felled it. The tree
from all the watercolors
of the White House of the Confederacy; shorter then,

barely shading the portico door,
and leafless in photos
of the Davis family: severe in their starched,

dark finery; eyes painted-on after they shut them
to afternoon's light, the sky
spider-veined, cracking

over downtown. The tree, they have decided,
will be cut into pieces—presented to the Sons
and Daughters—each small piece

set with an inscription,
and one held behind glass
in the museum with other relics—chain

from a lost anchor,
shirt with its original bloodstain,
and the maps of this place

that have faded more slowly
than the land they're of.
The cannons remain vigilant

against everyone leaving the video store. Already
The Last Confederate Tree
has begun to blur and fade

at the bottom of a thousand hope chests.
Now that everything is the past, what use
could a tree have? An old tree,

that no one thought
would die, that was there,
held its arms unfurled over soldiers

as they slept, soldiers unaware
their world would soon die, but not
the tree shading them, not the shade.

Tweet

Copyright © 2019 Craig Beaven All rights reserved
from Natural History
Silverfish Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission