The Empty Loom: Poems

ORCHARDS

ORCHARDS i. Already, this morning, The windfalls have been sorted, The drops and lengths of firewood Heaped beside the shed. I move among them, sifting through The seasons each has weathered, Enjoying the whiff of resins, The heft of the cord in my hands. And then the axe-head, Barking into timber, Into oak stump and locust As it slivers the resounding wood. Beyond me, windrows fray In showers of thin gold leaf. The orchard deepens in the apple’s core. Logs chocked on the shed floor, I work as though I meant it to last— This wall I’ll burn down all winter. ii. Buying winesaps, the hillside Behind the stand streaming With the bright crop 59 Burgeoning its boughs, I think of how you ripened, Carrying our sons, The flower inside you Swollen about its seeds, Your breasts grown globed And mortal as earthly fruit— A woman become her own Perfect miracle of blood And loam and laughter, Full moons, and the darkLeafed orchards of her hair. iii. A fleet seven of them float below me In the creek: yellow October apples, waxy suns, Fat tallow glowing on the water Like round brass lamps. Each one is a lavish compacting Of the flesh, bruised and translucent. Each one dinted In its hammered skin, washed golden Among the shadows of the bridge Where water’s a wreckage Of strewn cold fires. 60 iv. We watched men in the trees In February, dark hosts pruning Among the sturdy limbs. The green fire buckled Beneath their feet. Their hands Made motions, you told me, As though braiding ribbons Through their daughters’ hair. To me they resembled musicians Who again that year were rehearsing The grove’s momentum into fruit. I wanted you to see how, Even in the tree limbs, the men Had not left the earth in which The staffs of their ladders took root. v. Dusk and cambium and smoke— The hills grown transparent As the glass door of the woodstove, Sparrows flaying the chaff of light Back into their branches. Already this year the orchard aisles Are empty, the apples you loved Wizened black sacks. Logs I stacked in September 61 ...