With their branches cut off
the six trees left standing
by the corner
resemble the bare torsos
of as many men: clean and light
and without hair.

But these six are not stone.
That gesture of theirs,
whatever it means, that shrug
or nod: they want to live forever.

Now they throw long and wounded
shadows up the hill. No one asks:
Where are the leaves? The rings?
The golden crown?

They wait with a grief gone
blind—for the limbs lost,
the many years,

the very ground
they thought they would die for.

(Published previously in Spoon River Poetry Review)