Tree City, A History

Written and performed for Adam’s induction as Poet Laureate, January 2026

she said we don’t rock

in the rock, the river, the river

and rock and the long

gone ulmus americana

that lined the streets still

line the streets like a stack

of photographs you look

at only on christmas, or

when the black dog bites.

all love poems, i know:

core samples, inadequate.

i want you to want me

long enough for the fried

chicken line at the grocery

to subside. for the elm

bark beetles to carve

subtler signs in cambium.

i want you to be and so

if only the once and future

would come, crest we never

see fleshed with pulp,

pocket-hole in the kreg

joint and the 2xs flush.

lunch break not long enough

even when we spend it jawing

quotes from physicist clickbait

about everything we know

that says we know time hasn’t

run its course, that we step in

the same river twice and always.