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Landscape: McIntosh Apple Tree in the Back Yard
Every April tent caterpillars would fashion gauzy nests
in clefts between branches and the bronze-toned trunk.
Their un-stoppable chomping song— a language
that ate itself clean as it dwindled peaceful leafage
down to skeletal stems. Dad would retaliate—dousing
their pesky habitats with gasoline, tossing a struck match
to burn away the rampant hunger of those larval bodies.
I felt sorry for them, but it was either mom’s apple pie
or watching these measly creatures squirm
and crackle black as they dropped for an anguished
encore to the grass. Choices need to be made. My brother.
chose the weekly task of manhandling trash bins to the curb.
I chose the chore of mowing the lawn back-forth Saturday
mornings, trampling dew, clippings licked to my footsteps,
blather of blades as I proudly left behind wheel marks
in perfect parallel to the privet hedge. Those days I pursued
every task like the next merit badge for mom to sew
on my boy scout sash in rows and columns of accomplishment.
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