The pine we used to use
for second base in the vacant lot
across the street from where I was raised

is long gone, the lot having been
transformed back then 
by a split level

that was new, then decayed,
now refurbished to 
the beauty it originally displayed,

which for me is none.
I still resent how
the builders took that tree down

before I developed
enough strength and courage
to get farther than the first branch.

All that’s left: the unclimbable
third base birches, looking 
not a day older than they did

fifty years ago; those bent trees and 
my anger that somehow
whenever I come back

this is the first thing and nearly
the only thing I recall
about a place I once called home.