On our first Mother’s Day
without her, her son-in-law
and her grandson unbucketed
two volunteer oaks from another
back yard,

planting them in a far corner
of the yard that was hers, where
my favorite oak once leaned, arms
extended, graceful as a dancer,

whose woody lap I crawled into
with notebook and pen to
scrawl early stories and poems,
the tree holding all I had to
give it, until, a decade later,
it collapsed, unknowingly
watered to death by our father
cultivating a green carpet of lawn.

Today Kevin dug the holes
in the mound where that old trunk
once rose, and Eric tucked in
the spindly trees as lovingly
as he once blanketed his own
babies—not unlike the newest
among us sleeping in her
auntie’s arms on the patio.

And we stood there, each of us
silently whispering, Grow!
in the spot where I thought
my tree would forever stand,
where I learned that love
is always a two-way street,

even when we think it’s not,
even when we can’t imagine it
being reciprocated by something
so large, so rooted, so silent.