Aspen Tree

The drive is long and a little wide,
Well wider than the average,
Longer than most, just by a little. 

The Aspen is gone,
I saw it everyday driving up
the angled drive to
park the car in the garage,
an angle that it is easy,
but not so easy,
I always have to pay attention.

I hit the frame the other day.
$ 8 K, glad insurance covered it.
Hope it doesn’t go up too much
this year. 

I didn’t know it was leaving me so soon.
The tree man said it was time to go.
It’s been there since 97 or 98,
We’ve only been here 9.
Google says 25 years in our environment,
so it did pretty well.  

I now see the road,
from behind where the Aspen stood.
I wish I didn’t have to.
Only now do I understand the loss.
A stump and the dry grass of the winter remains.
It was on a little rise, and sometimes heavy snow now covers it.

Such a beautiful whiteness that always smiled,
At least I pretended that it did. It made me smile.

I should of paid more attention to it,
there was joy on the angled drive
into the garage.

020224 TG