The Cedar

Here's day nineteen's submission of NaPoWriMo (a poem a day for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month):

The Cedar

The cedar in the front yard

leans toward the house

and groans when it blows.

This worries me.

But not enough to call the arborist

and have him come cut it down.

We paid him a lot of green

five years ago to thin it,

to climb to the top with a chainsaw

lopping off limbs as he went

so the wind could blow through

its arching green branches

instead of knock it down.

Being a tree,

and doing what trees do,

it’s filled back in,

looks healthy and, the neighbors say,

“Great.”

They say the same about me,

and I have a bum knee,

an aching foot, a stent in my heart,

and I don’t see so well anymore.

I hope the cedar is doing better than me,

but when it blows, just to be safe,

I move to the other side of the house.