The ashes

Outside my window
the ash trees have already dropped
their yellowed leaves.

Piles are raked
by jolly immigrant workers under
the heavy afternoon sky

and loaded into dark bins,
then hauled to a waiting truck, dented and
coated with rust

with LANDSCAPING stenciled
in whitewash on the wooden slats
of the pickup bed.

Now the trim winter lawn
is clear again--like a body left naked,
bedsheets pulled back;

the neighboring ponderosa pines
point their verdant needles heavenward,
all full and defiant,

hovering comfortably over the roadway,
next to barren bark, the grisly remains
of thriving once-green.