A Retirement

By stevieslaw

It leafed out absent-mindedly
this year, our junk maple.
A street planting from the fifties,
its branches bald and barren here and there,
though not alarmingly so—
just enough that you would notice,
if you were the kind who’d notice.
It will weather this year, I imagine,
and most likely the next,
but I worry about
our foreseeable future.
On this spot, a twig of a thing,
staked out against the bare breeze,
stands in the unshadowed sun
while from this old house, some
other someone will watch it grow.

Bio: Steve Deutsch’s work has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Silver Birch Press, and Misfit Magazine.