Stump

Stump
You could say it wore a skirt of ivy flounces –still had that much self-respect,hadn’t realized it was dead yet, kept pumpingsap to the ghost of its branches
that rose like a glass dream. You couldcall it a sort of Viennese table or a messafter breakfast: spilled syrupwithout the pancakes. Or that it was the sliced off
breast of a saint — a woundwith red ants quietly nursing, andblow flies — those busy iridescent bruises –swarming in like Hells Angels
on a rumor of free beer. Orthat it was no longera plant at all, but the corpseof an animal. You could offer
that the maple might have crushedyour roof in a storm or that you had to have the lighteach morning the way a child needs a big glassof milk. Or that it was the El Niño winter
that made everything crazy,made February break into a feverand the six-legged drunks wake upfive weeks early. You could say that the stump
was a bitter fountain or maybea wild barrel of hope spillingits sweet water over the ivy frills and bark, and intothe dirt making a kind of dark batter, or
that it was glad to be drenched in its lastwet joy, as if green, or the love of green,was what it lived by.