“Dutch Elm Disease” by Luanne Castle
Photo Credit: D. Jakli
Next year when the women take their after-Sunday-dinner walk through the old neighborhoods of frayed-edge Victorian houses, only the oak and maple trees will remain. The elms will be mostly gone, cut down and destroyed, or crisp skeletons left standing. The smoke-gray sky will be visible through all the new gaps in the tree canopy. We will trudge through this haunted boneyard. Even though I’ll only be in first grade, I will catch the sad sickness of my mother, grandmother, and aunts and a portion of my mind will be bruised by loss. For years I will think that this is our disease because my mother’s family is Dutch and our American town is half Dutch.
But this year, after Grandpa’s birthday dinner with pudding rolls and tiny poffertjes, us girls stroll down the leaf-strewn sidewalks under the glorious yellow and red foliage. The fall color paints the neighborhood with a festive blush. Far, far above us, the lofty elm crowns tickle the heavens. The leaves at our feet blow in the breeze light as cotton balls, and Aunt Alice and I jump into crunchy piles collected for burning by home-owners. I reach out to touch a silky pigeon that wants to join our revelry, but it hops just out of my reach.
Artist Statement
My mother's family had lived in an area of Kalamazoo, Michigan, that was mainly populated by Dutch families since my great-grandparents made their home there. The modest old houses were sheltered by stately and beautiful elm trees until I was just old enough for school. That is when Dutch Elm Disease wiped out the population of elms. The memories of my childhood are the strongest inspiration for my flash nonfiction, flash fiction, and poetry.
Luanne Castle’s poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, River Teeth, Your Impossible Voice, JMWW, Grist, Fourteen Hills, Verse Daily, Disappointed Housewife, Lunch Ticket, Saranac Review, Pleiades, Cleaver, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, BULL, The Mackinaw, The Ekphrastic Review, Phoebe, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gone Lawn, Burningword, Superstition Review, One Art, Roi Fainéant, Dribble Drabble, Flash Boulevard, O:JA&L, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble, Antigonish Review, Longridge, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Gooseberry Pie, Switch, and Ginosko. She has published four award-winning poetry collections.