Field Museum
Chicago, August 31st, My Wife’s Birthday

I take my children to this place of recovery,
Dinosaur fossils and preserved African elephants.
In the heavy silence in the hall of felled trees,
My son studies the trunk of the black walnut.
He knows trees from the strangler fig
To his backyard cottonwood and chestnut.
He tells me one needs to smell the touch of bark
To know a tree in the dark. We move
From one case to another. He touches the glass.
He has this way of honoring the dead.

Michael H. Brownstein

Archived 02/11/2010