In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

Elms in Central Park

If I came back after midnight
I wouldn’t be surprised to find
them nuzzling and huddling flank
to flank, placid as cattle or dusty

elephants, these dozen trees,
by an accident of fate and fungus
spared the blight that whitened forests
of a whole continent.

Four stories up the rough boles, a chorus
(Alive! Alive!) is fanning thick green sheaves.
I’ve seen 14-year-old boys loom
like this and look this tender—

it’s the guilelessness of big things.
Nearly bare, the lowest branches
elbow awkwardly down
toward the patchy grass, while

a single leaf stirs without stopping
in the city’s metallic air and points
to the sudden sunlit flare
of plastic shards and bits of foil,
even here, dryad, blessing.

—
Ann Lauinger’s books of poetry are Dime Saint, Nickel Devil (Broadstone Books, 2022), Against Butterflies (Little Red Tree, 2013), and Persuasions of Fall (University of Utah, 2004), which won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry.

Know anyone who might appreciate reading Ann’s poem?
Why not share the link to this page?

Click here to return to the Table of Contents.