Yankee Tree

Yankee Tree

My body is built like an old Yankee tree--
     so year after year I'll continue to be--
tall and thin and oh so protracted
     with a mind so fine and ever so abstracted
 from the sense called common to all of the masses;
     I train with Montaigne and push up my glasses.
Like a tower in Babel I've mastered the art
     of building toward heaven completely apart
from wisdom, from knowledge, from hu-mil-ity
     so try as I might I'll continue to be
an old tree, a grey tree that's bent with self-pity
    needing to fall to make way for the City