GinkgoTree at Meigs and Gregory Hill Road

(for Dick, Lucinda and Margaret Snow Storms)

I wish I’d taken a photo
of your wild-with-yellow
Ginkgo tree, before it
started shedding its thorny
pods and fanning leaves.
A perfectly symmetrical,
almost fake-looking tree
twice the height
of your home –
all of its branches
reach straight out
like a mother’s arms--
bidding her children back
home. As you approach the last
few hundred feet before the back
path to Highland Park, it stuns you
with its glorious yellow—Yea! – Yellow –
the opposite of purple pom pom lilacs,
for which the park is known. Yellow
in Autumn when the other trees are
red, brown, orange and Evergreen.
Your yellow fan-leafed Ginkgo
owns Gregory Hill Road, until
it gives in to seasonal pressure –
and paints the sidewalk
with sleeping dreams
of lemonade stands.