Arsenal Oak

It isn’t there anymore, that ancient oak,

once the school logo, before the school

climbed the status ladder

from community college to university

The tree was across from the library, between it and the low-slung classroom buildings, old warehouses from the sixties,

across from the historic buildings, lawn where I would spread my blanket, barefoot, and read and write my way to my bachelor’s degree,

and the performing arts theater, where I had violin recitals as a child, attended plays as a student, and took humanities classes in the adjacent rooms.

When it rained, I was in the library, smoking on the second floor with the bound periodicals and government documents

or up on the third floor, in the stacks.

I could always see the tree,

Arsenal Oak.

My undergraduate campus was a Confederate arsenal (my grad school started the war, but that’s a different tree and story).

The tree was diseased, I was on the phone, from grad school

with my writing professor when they cut it down.

I still have a piece of it.

You can’t see its roots or branches,

but I feel them, every time I write.

Ambrose Bierce enjoyed writing under this same tree.