Last week, a tree that had stood for seventy-five years in the Isamu Noguchi museum garden in Long Island City, Queens, was taken down. It was the centerpiece of the garden; despite its name, it was a tree known as a noxious weed, an invasive species, the Ailanthus altissima. Those of you who have read my book, Circle of the Way, will recognize this tree. It has an important place in my emotional and spiritual history. Soon after I heard of its demise, I attended the screening of a video on invasive species. The result was the poem I reproduce below.
Tree of Heaven
We were watching a video about
invasive species, plants and animals
we don’t want here in Oregon,
to be aired in April on public
television, soon after Earth Day.
Massed at our borders, the zebra
mussels, yellow star thistle, red-
eared turtles, English ivy—
we put on our gardening gloves,
wade into the waters, point
accusing fingers at the invaders.
And I thought about the Tree of Heaven
that had stood in Queens across
the river from Manhattan
for seventy-five years and
was the Tree that Grows in
Brooklyn, book and movie,
and then the heartbeat of the garden
Isamu Noguchi made in this
industrial neverland outside
the warehouse he converted to
a museum for his sculptures,
massive many of them, struck
from basalt, marble, rock, almost
as natural when he got through
as when he found them, dragged
them in, and eased the insides out.
The tree was cut down on the weekend.
It was diseased, a threat, a tree
I’d sat with one long winter of my own
disease, not knowing it was just
a stink tree, as it’s sometimes called,
Ailanthus altissima or China-sumac,
Varnishtree,: a weed, or as the books
describe it, an invasive species
to be pulled up by its roots as soon
as possible or it will spread, take
over all the other shrubs and trees.
It has, some say, no landscape value.
Its flowers stink. It reproduces aimlessly.
Because it grows so fast so high
it came to be called The Tree
of Heaven, so I knew it, though in
Philadelphia our alley was choked
dead by these same weeds, we hated
them and wished them gone.
Once sixty feet in height, this one’s
reduced to stump, its wood to be
recycled into benches for the garden.
Noxious weed of my memory,
my desire, of a place where I was quiet
when there was no quiet for me
anywhere, the only heaven I could
hope to know, right there in that
improbable oasis where the very stones
would talk, the greenery transform
the air, and I was able once again
to breathe—is gone, but in its stump
stir shoots, the gardeners say. They say
the things just won’t lie down and die.
