Ruins beneath an Old Oak Tree

ruins

Ruins beside a tree
Did they argue or sing
as they dug the root cellar,
as they made these bricks?
They lived their lives
beside this old oak.

I can hear their laughter,
the children calling to each other
as they ran beneath the limbs.
You have to be an old oak tree to remember the laugh,
to hear them run beneath you.

Someone has moved the pile and have built
a new house beside the tree now
pioneers of the internet
the cell phone
and they argue about the bricks
that built our country under that oak.
Is that hope I see in the distance,
old tree, or
a mirage of hope?

david michael jackson