the last man

a month ago all the men
turned into poplar trees.
i knew so little about poplar trees
until then. i grew one on my head
which i at first mistook for antlers.
i have often been mistaken
about my own gender. caught a glimpse
of myself in a shop window 
& thought "cottonwood" or worse
"traitor." i have been betrayed
by my own desire to be a graveyard.
did you know cottonwood 
is just another way of saying "poplar"
& sometimes i think "graveyard"
is just another way of saying "gender."
to be a place people come
to amble & remember that which is
no longer breathing. that which
is all but a ghost & a string of recollections.
cardboard boxes of photographs.
mourners & girl scouts playing man hunt 
& teenagers desperate for a place
to make their gender visible. 
i never meant to be a person 
who tends poplar trees if you know
what i mean. but that is the thing.
most of the time your gender
arrives like this. like unexpected white flowers.
like the way the poplar trees
still wear their human man shadows.
the one in the yard, my father, 
hands by his side, turning 
to drink his fill of the sun.