Out the window, the elms fill the October sky in Illinois--large
orange X�s sprayed on their trunks�marks of a doomed race, cut down,
carted off until, by 1968, our High School graduation, few remain.

Mr. Stalworth, our Sociology teacher, lectures on Malthus
who believed only two things could keep population
in check: vice and misery, --their agents being war,

famine, and disease. I like the idea of vice. It�s not
something I�ve done too often. But my friends enjoy it.
Mr. Stalworth tells us, �Human beings were 1 billion strong

in Malthus�s age.� He pauses, asks, �Now Ralph,
what�s today�s population?� Ralph, who prefers vice to facts,
quips, �Don�t know: but after this weekend,� his eyes roll

like billiards, �there�ll be a few more.� Ralph will spend two
nights at the Blue Moon Motel with Ann Mayre and do it until his doer
is done. The teacher smiles, �Young man you bring up a good point:

Malthus adds "moral restraint" as a further check--restraint from sex,
from gratification as a sense of duty�something to consider?"
Ralph moans, mutters, �Easy for him. He�s a fag.� The teacher winces

and blanches. He�s boney, with a shock of white hair across his forehead.
His hands act as if they don�t belong to him and cannot restrain themselves:
they flutter like leaves desperate to unloose from limbs. I take good notes.

I pass; Ralph flunks. �Who cares?� he laughs, �Ann Mayre got her period.�
The elms, year by year, come down, the arched canopy that held up
the entire sky severed like the spine in God�s umbrella. My old notes said,

�The population, left unchecked, will outstrip man�s ability to live on this planet.�
Mr. Stalwort, no longer lives alone. With a beloved, he may decided against
restraint. Ralph, divorced with four children, ten grand children, lives in the city.

I�m divorced too with two children--my daughter just had a baby boy,
quite a sight with long slender fingers that remind me, as they splay out,
of the elms, of numbers , the increasing numbers�but who�s counting?



�2007 by Bruce Spang