The Catalpa

John Ciardi

The catalpa’s white week is ending there

in its corner of my yard. It has its arms full

of its own flowering now, but the least air

spills off a petal and a breeze lets fall

whole coronations. There is not much more

of what this is. Is every gladness quick?

That tree’s a nuisance, really. Long before

the summer’s out, its beans, long as a stick,

will start to shed. And every year one limb

cracks without falling off and hangs there dead

till I get up and risk my neck to trim

what it knows how to lose but not to shed.

I keep it only for this one white pass.

The end of June’s its garden; July, its Fall;

all else, the world remembering what it was

in the seven days of its visible miracle.

What should I keep if averages were all?

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