Mary Oliver - The Black Walnut Tree lyrics

My mother and I debate: we could sell the black walnut tree to the lumberman, and pay off the mortgage. Likely some storm anyway will churn down its dark boughs, smashing the house. We talk slowly, two women trying in a difficult time to be wise. Roots in the cellar drains, I say, and she replies that the leaves are getting heavier every year, and the fruit harder to gather away. But something brighter than money moves in our blood – an edge sharp and quick as a trowel that wants us to dig and sow. So we talk, but we don't do anything. That night I dream of my fathers out of Bohemia filling the blue fields of fresh and generous Ohio with leaves and vines and orchards. What my mother and I both know is that we'd crawl with shame in the emptiness we'd made in our own and our fathers' backyard. So the black walnut tree swings through another year of sun and leaping winds, of leaves and bounding fruit, and, month after month, the whip- crack of the mortgage.