What happened to Berkeley?

A poem about gentrification and Berkeley

Photo by Chronis Yan on Unsplash

The eucalyptus,
the interloper,
is handsome anyway.
Wanted or not,

he compels my attention
with his cool, smooth bark
or bark-less bark, really.

He has no bark, this
specimen. He is all
bone. Green, glowing,
pristine,

he vaults from the ground,
the grandest
tree on the block,
and the most offensive.

Insouciant, vibrant
vigorous
breathtakingly tall
undeniably sexy.

Yet somehow cold
and somehow ugly,

like the house
behind me, at my
back. The house across
from the luminous,
arboreal specimen.

It is dark, squat,
the opposite really, yet
just as ominous.