walking with my son

There's a trail that weaves through a grove of small poplar
that we walk in the evenings as the sun goes down,
when the young bending trunks take on such a color of pink
I can never remember but always dream,
where we sit in summer as green leaves grow
among the rattle of come-and-go breezes,
and find in the fall the color of yellow against a roaring blue
until one day the nakedness of branches--
a landscape becomes part of you.
Why do I speak of this in the present tense?
They're nothing now
just splinters
a swath of bulldozer tracks
beneath electric lines.