Jeremy Michael Reed
Pantoum: The Sycamore Tree
I: Interruption
The day they came to cut the sycamore,
the dust came up from earth, cracked the drive.
Windows shuddered old glass kept in panes.
No one was home beside me and my grandfather.
The dust came up from earth, cracked the drive.
We both looked up from the game we played.
No one was home beside me and my grandfather
and the stories he told me of his father on trains.
We both looked up from the game we played,
as we discussed the man he’d barely known,
the stories he told me of his father on trains.
One linked to the next, he’d hop the cars.
As we discussed the man he’d barely known,
the windows shuddered, distracted him from pain.
One linked to the next, as boxcars hopped in rain,
on the day they came to cut the sycamore.
II: The Depression
The day they came to cut the sycamore,
no one was home beside me and my grandfather.
The dust came up from earth, cracked the drive,
and windows shuddered old glass kept in panes.
No one was home beside my great-grandfather.
The family’d left the farm behind, empty.
Windows shuttered. Old glass – broken panes.
They’d left while he’d gone West for horses.
The family left the farm behind, empty.
They’d sold the land, neighbor explained.
They’d left while he’d gone West for horses,
mustangs open-throated and untamed.
They’d sold the land, neighbor explained.
The dust came up from earth, cracked the drive.
Mustangs open throated and untamed.
The day cut off from root, like a sycamore.
III: Roots
The day they came to cut the sycamore,
windows shuddered old glass kept in panes.
No one was home beside me and my grandfather.
The dust came up from earth, cracked the drive.
Windows shuddered old glass kept in panes
grimed in dirt kept underground too long.
The dust came up from earth, cracked the drive
with the force of limbs cut free from the trunk.
Grimed in dirt, grown underground so long,
the roots remained my childhood street’s namesake.
With the force of limbs cut free from the trunk,
all left were roots below the ground.
The roots remain my childhood street’s namesake.
No one was home except me and my grandfather.
All left is roots below the ground.
Days come, cut the sycamore.
IV: Poetry
The day they came to cut the sycamore,
the dust came up from earth, cracked the drive.
Windows shuddered old glass kept in panes.
No one was home beside me and my grandfather.
The dust came up from earth, cracked the drive,
revealed memories buried, rooted down.
No one was home beside me and my grandfather.
How memory works: it leaves alone yet dwells.
Reveal memories buried. Disturb the ground.
Through sheer force disrupt all but the roots:
how memory works: retrieves, shifts, swells.
The roots persist. Push up grass decades later.
Through sheer force disrupt all but the roots.
Shatter windows. Break old glass. Keep pain.
The roots persist. Push up grass decades later.
Come, cut the sycamore again.
~
Jeremy Michael Reed is a doctoral candidate in poetry at the University of Tennessee. His poems and essays have been published in Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Rumpus, The Cresset, and Camas: The Nature of the West.
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