Hey paper tree

The suburbs are littered with them. Planted neatly on nature strips in front of squat brick veneer houses. Not much good for shade, really, because of their scrappy thin leaves sprouting from sparsely tangled branches. But they grow well without much fuss. If paperbark trees were a type of person, they’d be a retired bare knuckled boxer who paints pet portraits. They show their tough history in their rough exterior but when you peel back a bit of their bark you realize just how soft and gentle they are.

Unfortunately for this paper tree, someone put the safety tape around the wrong area and now it’s, well, you know, chopped. Poor thing.

I wonder how many kids had peeled off this tree’s bark, trying to make it as thin as possible so that it looked like paper you could write your name on? Just like I did when I was a kid.

Hey paper tree, see you later. Let’s hope your logs have been taken and used to make something practical like, um, paper.