Aftermath

It seems the cranberries I tried to make into sauce, sweetened with orange juice, refused to be budged into sweetness.  Of course it may have helped if I'd used sweetened orange juice, or tasted the o.j. ahead of time. I assumed Whole Foods orange juice would be sweet.  The sauce may not be worth saving.  Some such things need to be let go... with grace.  Our ash tree?  Not so much.

This is the morning after,

The morning after the turkey,

After the cranberry sauce so sour

The leftover sauce

Will have to be doctored

For sweetness,

Perhaps baked into muffins.

The rest of the family

Still sleeps sound

In the light

Of late morning.

Pale blue sky

Highlights bare trees.

The lone backyard squirrel

Fluffs his tail

Runs up and down the ash tree.

The tree still survives

The borer:

Emerald green

From China.

We doctored the tree

For life

Last year.

It is still alive for us,

For the squirrel.

We may have to call it quits

On the cranberry sauce.

Tree blight

As I write this, the tree guys feed branches into wood shredders.  It is incredibly loud.  The ash tree in our backyard has been deemed treatable.  We will see. 

As I write this, Boston and the surrounding area is on lockdown for the Marathon bombers.  The bombers, maybe two, maybe three, are mostly marked with orange Xs.

We live on a street

With ash trees.

They are mostly marked

With orange Xs

Their fate is clear.

The emerald ash borer

Must be stopped

In its tracks.

They came from Asia.

Nothing bad ever begins

In this country

In this county

In this town

On this street

In our yard.

Growing up in Minneapolis

It was Dutch elm.

It is always easier

To blame something bad,

On some thing

On some one

From overseas
even
Over some border.

Mark them with orange Xs

Stop the blight

Nothing ever seems to start

Here.