from Digging (old poem I'm resurrecting)

I said blue spruce.  My very own tree.

He brought it home from the Beaverlodge nursery.

We squashed anthills with our rubber boots and watched the ants run,

poisoned aphids, followed tire tracks in the grass,

scraped our arms on raspberry bushes.  He put his boot

on the shovel and dug a hole, and lowered the roots, my blue spruce.

It never grew, among the choke-cherry trees,

among the pin-cherry trees.