You have to understand
that the streetlights are all new,
attached to bark-stripped timber poles
naked as these tenacious trees
that held on tight to Missouri clay
while the wind undressed them,
left standing shy now
before strangers and news cameras.
The rubble of the high school still manages to teach Geometry:
Right angle window frames slammed perpendicular through planes
of brick, chain-link fencing arced into semi-circles,
one tree wrapped entirely in a cylinder of metal ribbon.
Then there’s the Algebra lesson:
JOPLIN HIGH SCHOOL is reduced
to O and P.
Neighborhoods too
lie strewn. A giant’s game of pick-up sticks.
Blue and red and silver cars
now strange wads of Christmas paper
crumpled up and tossed aside.
But, the squat and ragged remnants
of oaks and maples have already
put out clumps of green,
Dr. Seussian tufts
oddly nooked
along bird-less, boney limbs.
And recently, some benevolent vandal
bookended those remaining letters
with H and E,
creating an altar
where a local artist
dragged uprooted tree trunks
carved into eagles.