A Tree Falls In Brooklyn

When the tornado came through Brooklyn last year, a great tree on my block came down on my mother-in-law's car and leaned against my neighbor's house. This was a London Plain like many of the others that shaded the row-houses from the 1860's and was probably planted about the same time. Inside the cracked trunk was an enormous beehive full of honey. The beekeepers came day after day to coax the reluctant queen to come out. Her soldiers and drones wouldn't abandon her and she wouldn't abandon the tree. After about a week, she was transfered in a box somewhere else. I think of her and her army of thousands every time I walk by the stump of that great old tree on our block. The soil that stubbornly refuses to cede any space to the concrete around it can't support another tree that size, the roots are too big. So all that's left is a memory of the once-proud trunk, the stately branches and the cooling power of the shady leaves. That and the bees.