by W Roger Carlisle
In frozen January, my wife and I
would drag our discarded Christmas tree
out of the house and onto the curb. The tree
always looked scraggly and bare with its few
strands of tinsel and shiny foil icicles.
The limbs and fine needles were largely gone;
it felt like a homeless person had camped in our yard.
One year we found joy and relief when we looked out
our kitchen window. Our four year old son had
collected all of the discarded trees in the neighborhood
and planted them upright in our back yard. We enjoyed two
weeks of my child’s innocence and hope in his dying forest.