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Naturalism Between them is only difference Saussure The error was the inspiration Trees I’ve never seen with names I knew real word but not true wood, ginkgo male or female, always only one kind: a living fossil, oldest gymnosperm, “naked seed,” reproducing by means of direct contact with air (resistant to pests and pollution): there shouldn’t be flowers, shouldn’t be fruit White flowers one book says are yellow, Ginkgo biloba, scientific names strew themselves across damp sidewalks, appellation sheds petals in May wind, simile, similitude, have I compared, the only extant member of its order, Ginkgoales, Ginkgoaceae, domesticated by description (extinct otherwise) Wrong attributes over everything, petals stuck to soles, imagined into subject matter, fan-like leaves framed by mistake, words (Chinese or Japanese? my sources are unclear) for silver apricot, silver nut: tiny plums prized for their kernels (plum-like), the ripe flesh stench between two fingers, beneath two feet (which one?) 46 Shepherd PG:Layout 1 12/20/06 5:27 PM Page 46 They fall after first freeze, heavy with frost (an unambitious tree, wrinkled fruit barely an inch across: tiny cherries?), stepped on in early winter Iowa the stink comes back of August, late summer smell smeared through December (red-purple when the book says yellow, and smelling of nowhere) Write only what you see, it said, first this, first that (I walked past them every day, under them, three in a sidewalk row: a commonplace tree, no real interest at all, reeking fruit fouls the sidewalk all fall, cross the street to avoid them) The read tree and the real tree (this happens only in writing): never an even number, three of one kind Knowing the names with nothing to paste them onto (trees I’d seen but never known, misnomer printing petals on wet pavements): just one kind at a time, white four-petaled flowering May, clear green-lobed leaves cover summer, gold in fall (perhaps some strain of ornamental plum): first come flowers, first come leaves Not the same tree at all For Robert Philen and Lawrence White 47 Shepherd PG:Layout 1 12/20/06 5:27 PM Page 47 ...

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