What He Did Poem by RIC BASTASA

as law professor teaching civil and political law
he did not tell his students that he writes poems during some
breaks of their studies.
as the students hurdle a legal problem in marriage
he preoccupies himself with some images: an old weary man
carrying an ax, debarking a tree without leaves.
it can carry him far away to some hills in his mind.
clouds and storms dock on his forehead.
he shakes his head, and goes back to the legal words
right on the page of his book. Finds himself again, strong willed.
Astute. Wise. Objective. Sharp.
A student raises his hand and recites a solution the problem.
He listens and claps his hands.

The class is dismissed and he is left alone in the room
It is 8: 45 in the evening.

Images come again. The tree is finally cut. The barks turn into paper.
He knows now the cause of the decay. Some termites.

The old man is dead. Cut by the ax. The ax is gone.
Who did it? Why?
These are his mind games.

He opens the door of the car and begins to drive himself back home.
He has a poem to write again.

It is about that old man who died beside a tree that he debarked.
It is not more of the ax or termites.

It is the tree. A tree without leaves.
A very lonely tree which is cut.

He is happy now.