Trees splay like pickup sticks down Bradford Street
and the Surfside Arms roof still lies in its parking lot.
People walk the bumpy lane to our house
with offerings: bread, tortilla chips,
cubes of yellow cheese and salami:
the Heart Attack tray. They want
too much. I’m like the black phone
on his desk, sound still cut off.
There’s no power yet, or running water.
I'm here on a tape loop: chest
compressions, paddles. Clear. Again.
Until they halt. I want to wake
from the nap that made me miss the last
few hours no one knew he had,
while he stood at the stove, making black bean soup,
dicing a fat yellow onion, eyes
weeping a little, as the gusts began to shake
the leaves of Charlie’s maple a few doors down.
I climb out the back of the ambulance, suddenly single,
and see Charlie Mayo’s long-loved maple
on the ground, its hobbit-tunnel roots exposed
like veins across a man’s naked chest.
No one should see this. I want it
to stand up.