Wake up early in the morning to the gigantic sound
of the tiny biplane only one hundred yards away
about twelve feet off the ground oozing pesticide
          plopping down on the bean fields.

Afterwards rashes appear, a persistent little dry cough,
a headache and a horde of grasshoppers plus every other insect
was in the field threaten to locust in the lawn and garden.

You see the dead birds lying in the shell white drive.
For once the lifeless creature is not a road kill.

The eviction notice will come from the heirs
who don’t know that the great old Pecan tree,
the high ground of the region is the Tree of Life,
the Tree of the World and that we have been
it’s caretakers. No one here knows.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.