On Fallow Ground

Important moments in my childhood:

     The baby pine given me after services
     is fifteen years old and nearly as many feet high.
     We left them unattended.
     My sister's died.

     I buried some seed
     in the sandbox where,
     daily, I terrorized ants.
     It bloomed.

     And the rock my father
     taught me to grow,
     one long and restroomless day,
     became a mountain by next visit.

These, I suspect, are some of the reasons
the chips have fallen where they have
since the first observed dawn.