PRUNING TREES IN CALIFORNIA

By Dane Cervine

Lobo leans in, shows me photos on his phone
of the large black metal clamps fusing his spine,
long scars lining his back like trenches
in the body’s war. He’s old,

weathered as a beaten rugby ball,
scrambles like a goat to make a living
pruning trees with his crew. Asks about
our trip to India, the poor, were they
happy?

I speak of the Indian family
on whose roof we were offered chai
where the clan ate, slept
on colorful woven carpets open to sky
while their milk-cow munched hay
in its downstairs dirt-floored room.
Lobo ponders this,

wistful about his own modest dreams:
to avoid living in the homeless tent-shelter
blossoming near the freeway. His Mexican crew,
to find a country to live in.

Lobo is happy for work,
removing the stubborn roots of dead trees,
pruning the young ones.
We talk of the Indian cow in its stabled room,
a sky full of heat and storm,
Indian saris worn for festival and
carrying dried cow-dung alike.
The red and golden hues of homeless tents here,

what it means to have enough. To curve
with the body’s age, find the root
of death and happiness.