LaDeanna Mullinix
We named you posthumously
since you died the same day
as the prince – April 9, 2021.
You had much in common –
old, loved, regally tall, and we knew
you were failing,
losing some substance up top.
Still, we were not ready,
and you’d think we might have heard
a two-story black gum fall
in the night.
But thunder covered your collapse,
and there you were,
dead on the damp earth in the morning
as we walked the dog,
lifting him over your fresh corpse.
Luckily the moon, though waning,
had wooed you to the east
so you didn’t
crush us, sleeping 15 feet away,
nor the little white dog.
We left you to rest–too heavy to roll,
remaining a testament
to gentility, aristocracy among trees.
It will be a year next month –
warm enough to sit
on the bench you’ve become
and have a cup of tea.
LaDeana Mullinix is a Quaker, a retired occupational therapist, a native Kansan, a Master Gardener and a Master Naturalist. Her poetry and essays have been published in Friends Journal and Slant. Her poetry has been published in one anthology, and two were recently accepted in a forthcoming anthology featuring Ozarks poets, from the University of Arkansas Press.