sense of place

In my childhood neighborhood there was leg of sidewalk under which tree roots grew, tearing the sidewalk apart through years of hard work.

In that tree was a limb that if you squinted, looked like the approximation of a woman. We named her Persephone and in the spring her strange long brach of a nose burst into glorious blossom.

We said to each other that Persephone had trapped herself in a tree after Hades, lord of the dead refused to marry her.

They fell deeply in love back when the Haudanausaunee people walked the land. They promised to marry each other in a year from the day they fell in love, after Persephone dug a channel for the Hudson river through the Hudson Highlands and Hades went to Lake Tear of the Cloud and pulled the water from the most intimate part of the earth.

After a year apart, Persephone returned to where they had fallen in love to be married but Hades did not. He had fallen into the deepest part of the lake and met the most intimate face of the earth. He had completely forgotten Persephone in his infatuation with this tender and fertile place.

Persephone, in her grief reached down to the earth and up to the sky in a plea for relief. And the earth and heavens herd her and in a show of mercy turned her into an oak tree. There she stands at the corner of my neighborhood to protect other lovers and skin the knees of children who ride their bikes too recklessly.