There used to be a tree right there.
She was a gnarled thing, having with-
stood storms, draught, saws, plastic bags
loosely tangled from root to crown.
She spun cotton through the campus -- 
her late spring sowing of herself -- 
and for all that, not even a
shadow remains of her branches.

I remember field days, track meets
her trunk provided a craggy
but firm backrest. Shade & shelter
demolished like some trees before 
her -- to make paper, this pencil.
Her footprint's here, these few loose lines
I plant, which might take root for you,
no stranger to gaps in the sky.

Written in community with VerseLove, a group of mostly educators writing a poem every day of April (National Poetry Month). The prompt for today: Write a poem whose first words of each line come from the first words of each line from another poem. Here, James Wright's "The Shadow and the Real".