Here under jagged leaves fluttering dark
and soft silver and under heads swelling
in all their verdure over brittle scales,
her skin one hundred jeweled tints from sunlight
to shadow laying one upon the next
as thick as forgotten oils, she does rest
against the trunk whose shallow ridges ride
her tender back. Last night’s rain is a stain on her gown;
this morning’s lethean dew drips, drips from leaves
above her, falls on her face. Her shoulder rolls
across her cheek rubbing it away, rubbing
it in. Hands play in the wild snarl of grass
at the tree’s base, the fingers remembering fruit
plucked then eaten, shriveled up stalks twisted
and snapped, and all the seeds buried in the dirt.

Before the night began to fade, and sky
to blue from rich wine changed, he walked the black
tobacco fields and the orchard and sat himself
on the porch’s steps for a glass, but now rises to meet
her supplicant limbs and bring his bride into
his house again. A gentle wind rolls rain
from each little loving cup of every
awakening plant which unfolds to the call of the thrush.
He hears the song of water upon her skin
as the golden toll of the Angelus brightly begins
in the clay vessels gathered by the ancient well.

They’ve been estranged
for a night, and that’s long enough.
The lover finds the beloved beneath the lone apple
growing among the maples and other trees
of the forest that, if the forest were fair,
would fall upon themselves
in obeisance to the fruit-bearer,
at once the most domesticated
and most glorious of them all.

The beloved arrays herself with fallen boughs,
the leaves still green.
She, perhaps, makes the lovelier tree.
“Who am I?” and she shakes her leaves. He
opens his arms, and she must put down the
branches which have caught her hair
in their desperate fingers.
At last, they withdraw to the big
house leaving a chain of her copper hair
braceleted around one thin, blossoming arm.


© 2008 by Leslie D. Bohn. All rights reserved.