Home		Eric Nelson Earth Day
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		Free for the taking on Earth Day at the Botany Park—spindly, pot-bound magnolias with few leaves more alive than dead. But both kids had to have one no matter what I said. At home I broke the ground and the kids shovelled deep enough for a tree or child to fit. They hunkered in, their heads below the mounds of dirt. I smiled at first, but when they wouldn’t get out, and then began to pull the dirt in on themselves, I yelled and yanked them to the grass, where they lay begrimed as severed roots. The younger one welled up with tears, the elder turned his back as I tore away the plastic pots, dropped the saplings in the holes and buried them. That night, after baths and dinner and edgy silences, I went outside to water the trees. In the dark I tried to imagine them grown, their limbs and leaves, flowers white and sweet, shade and shadows falling on the house like echoes of voices.
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