The Woodlot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Woodlot" was first published by Alabama Literary Review in 2016. It appears in my book Pointing Home.

 

The Woodlot

 

Eleven years ago we bought the house,

a cottage on a quiet lane, where trees

dominate the landscape, where the Ville

de Saint-Lazare protects its woods and wetlands

with an environmental bylaw bible

thicker than the girth of any oak

or sugar maple sapling one may wish

to cut without a permit from a stern

and rigorous inspector. So it was

we moved into our house in mid-October

and filled over a hundred bags with leaves

we’d raked until our backs and hands could take

no more of it. There were about a dozen

trees in our backyard, but the lot behind

was brush and bramble underneath a stand

of ash and linden, ironwood and one—

just one—white birch. It was a wooded lot,

and it had been the clincher on the deal:

no rear neighbors. We’d have bought

it if we could. Some day. Or so we thought.

 

You and those trees, he groused, a mild reproach,

because he, too, enjoyed the privacy

and loved the flocks of chickadees who fed

from outstretched hands, the squirrels and rabbits who

built their dreys and warrens in that wood.

Wild raspberries were plentiful in summer;

each spring trillium and columbine

shot up to ease the slap of April snow;

and often frigid January seemed

less so, as northern cardinals’ wheet! wheet! wheet!

whistled through the branches of the lot

that bordered on our dog’s last resting place.

Last year in early May the lot was sold,

and all the trees, including the lone birch,

were felled, chain-sawed and hauled away. The laws

I mentioned don’t apply (so I’ve been told)

to new construction, and a house was built.

A matching shed. A five-foot chain-link fence

secures new neighbors from the likes of me—

the one who trespassed. She who hugged that tree.

Click HERE to hear the northern cardinal's song.

Click HERE to hear one of the songs of the black-capped chickadee.