First published in Grey Matter #1, 1987, page 16. Also published in Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society #6, October 1997, page 108.
There’s a poplar in the neighbour’s yard where
Robert lives
with a branch
that with a jump
you dangle from and pull
your legs up then
swing onto,
that beckons to branch after
branch till you can see
the drive-in.
Me and Robert climbed it
till it fell in the storm and
wrecked the fence we used to hop.