To a Flowering Gum Tree

I loved your graceful, awkward limbs, 
the red and yellow powder puffs, bright,
in the soft dawn of those sizzling summer days
that give no quarter beneath a hard sky.

When I first came, you hunched,
ringbarked, raped and tentative
amid uncaring sand.
But in time, you relaxed, grew and spread
until yesterday, that is.

Unbeknownst to me, they came
(Well intentioned, but ignorant)
and robbed and violated you once more.
Poor, bloodied stumps 
cry out to an azure sky.