If I were the Addams Family tree we paid a guy
named Steve to trim and fell,
I would brightly burn
in Emily's and Matt's new old Sixties boondocks home
with its two wood stoves,
like confetti I would burst
all over Steve's red face and his stubby, hungry saw
to celebrate myself.
I would calmly face
the twenty-something cretins from the all-night party house
down the street who took
the biggest pieces from my base
and gathered in their driveway, circling with beers
and axes, wonder-struck
by my power and my girth.
I’d shine out from my stump like the clean face of the moon
and gaze up at the sun,
remembering our love-
making without cease, even in the naked winters,
screaming from my grasping
Thomas Hart Benton
limbs and when you leaned into the February gales,
like a lost bird,
you would hear me sing.