Poem with the Ghosts of Loquat Flowers

(Eriobotrya japonica, Japanese or Chinese plum)


Is it still true that there are more trees 
than stars in the Milky Way? When the neighbor 
with a garden full of brown-eyed-Susans, bluebells,
and a giant loquat was transfered to an assisted
living facility in Richmond, the people who bought
her house lost no time changing the "landscaping."
They cut down the loquat tree, whose boughs
had bent low with sweet yellow fruit from late spring
to early summer, then cleared all the roses to build
a driveway. As he worked with his cultivator and
clippers, the man liked to sing at the top of his lungs
as though he was rehearsing for an opera part 
he would not get; we could hear him through closed 
windows. His wife, her ponytail sticking out the backstrap 
of a baseball cap, collected the plant debris in her arms. 
Loquat flowers are small, less than an inch in diameter, 
with five creamy petals like the arms of a star. 
When they begin to bloom in clusters, even in late 
winter, they exude a sweet, mellow fragrance. 
Think of a sky full of them, a whole canopy of scent,
their faint flickering enough to make you swoon.