For the Orchard - Christine Walker

[Larry Robinson]

For the Orchard

I want to tell you about the apple orchard.
How in the spring, when I come up over the rise,
blossom clouds soften the sky with a whisper.
How on summer afternoons I swim carelessly
through green shade and shards of light.
How autumn fills me ripe with desire,
and I devour stolen fruit as I walk.
How the winter horizon is sharpened at night
with unadorned branches pinned to stars.

This April day I’ll tell you
how I drew the trees as they lay felled.
Trunks, connected or not by shred of bark,
lay on stumps ridged by saw tooth.
Limbs capsized into impossible tangles
laced with the season’s new growth.
Here and there, among the terrible beauty,
I witnessed, first and last, the blossoming.

   - Christine Walker