Spring Felling

by RENEE EMERSON

Our street is lined with Bradford pears
and the stumps of Bradford pears.
White dabs of flower powder-puffing spring
off branches prone to breaking.

Early April, and we expect another baby. We keep
a list of names, divided boy and girl, chosen
for syllable and measure. We walk every day, test
“Barnabas” and “Peregrine” in our own voices,
just to see what comes back when called.

My sister names what I do “preparing,”
this trying to lay out the cards of everything
that can be known to predict what can’t.

I knew, even pregnant with her, my baby would die.
I tell myself that now as one of those well-worn
ruts of language that lead us nowhere useful.

Only because they grow quick and easy,
developers chose these trees, for a sense
of everything having been there long before
we were. We chopped ours down and burnt the wood,
after our daughter picked blossoms from the fallen
limbs, cross-hatched, brittle already. We had to cut it
before it fell. It’s what grows slow that won’t crack
in a storm, won’t go hollow in the center.