Climate Control

Climate Control

On the 45th floor,

the olive tree is mute

with hunger’s strike:

Here in the glass box

there is no breeze

not even a whisper

to play with

her branches hang stiff

with all the rustles

they are already forgetting

how to sing.

First in rebellion

then in grief

eventually in exhaustion

she drops leaves like love

letters she doesn’t know

how to send: for where

would she find her brothers & sisters?

The soil of their birth

has expelled them as gifts

the farmer’s sons

now financiers have claimed

las raíces de su familia

for a touch of home.

She is baring her bones

discarding her best

her juiciest, most plum greens

screaming with no hope

of reaching her cousins’

display in the park below—

Below, where the heat

deadly droops their leaves

but at least, they can sing & scream

wail & moan with the wind’s caresses;

Though perhaps they are begging

leaf by leaf, to be bagged up,

brought in to the cool

the calculated climate

control she rails against.

—Rebbekah Vega Romero

POET’S NOTE: This poem was written in response to the anguish of an Italian olive tree I cared for while working at a global capital firm this summer. The tree had been brought in by the founder who was homesick for the hills of France, and had a violent reaction to its displacement. The Spanish phrase reflects my own Cuban heritage and multi-diasporic experience; “las raíces de su familia” translates to “the roots of her family.”