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I won’t let them take the poplars down. Saws ready to swirl, hoping to save crumbling concrete, but if they do my taproot too will be severed. There is so little left now and the wind in those trees speaks only to me, but it whispers Yes ─ we were all really once there. We were all really once there, all of those summer-dew mornings and fan-humming hot afternoons, nights when the poplars would rustle, stirring the curtains at the window of my bedroom, stirring the curtains at the window of my soul. I am the only one left to hear the rustle and to remember, and I won’t let them take the poplars down.
Terri Watrous Berry is a Michigan septuagenarian whose work has appeared over the past thirty-five years in anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, including this fall in Gyroscope Review, Ms. Aligned's Coming of Age, Waco Cultural Arts 2023 anthology, Wild Librarian Press' Wild Crone Wisdom, and The Devil's Party Dress' Instant Noodles.
Poplars are my favorite tree. I love how they glitter in the breeze.