I left the cemetery that April day And drove to the old farmhouse Where I’d grown up. Dead leaves shattered As I walked around the house I hadn’t seen in twenty years The tree branch that had held the rope swing, The grassy space by the woods where I’d played… Still there. The trees, just beginning to show new leaves Let more light reach the ground than under summer’s Dense canopy of green Broken beer bottles, left by hunters, I guessed, lent sparks of light To the dried leaves that had piled up for years Shards of broken glass hung from the frame Of my old bedroom window Paint had worn off the house, leaving gray weatherboard Speckled with holes from buckshot From deer hunters no longer worried about anyone living there The house sagged where rain had blown in for years. And I knew the house would never be rebuilt. I turned to go back to the car. And that’s when I saw it. When we’d moved to the farm and cleared the yard I came across the trunk of a small tree, about two-feet tall Near the edge of the woods Thin bare branches arched up and then curved downward. A Wisteria, my mother had said An old one cut off and shaped into a small tree. It bloomed later that spring, and every year after Pendulous clusters of lilac-colored flowers on still bare branches; A fountain of color before its leaves even grew. But the year we moved away, My uncle helped clear brush along the edge of the yard And cut down the dormant Wisteria Mom had cried when dad told her what had happened. But that Wisteria, a vine by nature Had sent out runners in every direction That climbed high into the oaks Pines and other trees behind the house Reaching towards the sun Pendulous flower clusters On bare arching branches More beautiful than it had ever been When pruned into a tree That Wisteria, though cut to the ground, hadn’t given up It hadn’t died. I walked to my car then And drove back home Feeling better, somehow.