black cherries

that cherry tree,
full of sweet black cherries
and flies, and children
scrambling like monkeys
when no one was home
to strip it bare, and fill
their pained stomach
with stolen fruit is gone
now. the man took an axe
one morning, and in heavy
swings chopped at its trunk
until it tilted and fell.
you can still see,
decades later,
the rot of its stump
in the squared green yard.
he's been dead for years,
the joy of his tree
also long gone.