The Elms Rain Seed

The elms rain seed. They’re feather light, have oval wings.

The merest breath of air now carries these zooming

High or, when it fails, it lets them fall by lightly

Twirling undulating beats down on the grey concrete

To make it look like modernistic carpeting

With speckled gold. Clusters lie on chairs, on the summer

Table’s dark green metal grid, waiting there for broom

Or stick to sweep them down. Longingly downward bound

They are, the little would-be elms. They hope for a

Salvation that they picture as black ground, and in

This man-invaded space that consummation,

Devoutly to be wished, seems from the elm’s perspective

Unreachably distant and hard to realize.