Sumac And Maple

This part of New England
holds so much 
roofless wreckage.
Every bitter little town
has at least one example:
brick and stone walls
around a decayed floor
full of rusted machine parts,
creosote-black scraps
of support beams,
and always 
the young sumac
and maple trees
sprouting and rising.  

Those ruins
are why we don’t talk 
to strangers easily here.
Too much
of what we have
invited to give us
structure and strength
has turned out to be
transitory. 

Nothing new lasts;
even the mills
we saved and restored
and refilled with lofts
and small businesses
stuffed with computers
and optimism
are emptying again,
and who knows
how long they will stand
intact? This is after all

the land of
stubborn sumac
and smirking maple,
mocking us from their toeholds
in our sidewalk cracks,
promising 
a day

when all we put here
will succumb
to their roots,
the weather,
and time.