Saturday, August 3, 2019

Public Art



Coming out of my dentist's last week, a smooth crown over the molar that had for too long sat in my mouth like a broken piece of tea cup, I noticed in the raised box by the parking lot a mostly organic figure.

I stepped onto the box to better read its contents: a stump whose roots were bound by a heavy black wrapper, with something green and leafy sprouting at its east end. Beside the stump, and unrelated to its living form, yellow tufts of grass. At one point the surface of the box had been covered in a fine gravel.

Upon closer inspection the leafy matter turned out to be chestnut. A chestnut tree was planted here. (I counted the rings inside the stump; there were close to fifty of them, making it as old as the building.) But then what? It wasn't wanted anymore? It had grown too big? Too big for what -- the box?



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