Kevin Pryne - Lime Tree

[Larry Robinson]

Lime Tree

On a spring day out at Harmony Farm,
among some herbs and sorrel, we bought
a Meyer lemon tree and a Bearss lime
and planted them in urns on the new deck.
And then, so quickly, you were ripped from life
and I consigned to tend these things alone.
Through a hard summer slowly the leaves
of the lemon blackened. I called nurseries
and tree farms. No one knew anything.
Autumn rain left it shriveled and weeping.
When I was out of town a strange cold snap
raved away on the frozen deck,
 
lemon leaves fell on the new red planks.
The empty, tangled boughs were blighted gray
and the lime too, stricken and it’s green leaves
long gone by spring - I quit watering it.
But a friend came by to help in the back.
The place was a wreckage of my winter.
When she watered it I said “don’t bother,
that one is dead”, but she said “no, look”.
A tiny green defiant speck had cracked
the gray bark to speak a just command
against the blue spring sky - like a barnacle
attached to a world that had died.

	- Kevin Pryne