How We Love

You were not one for blossoming things blushed at the will of the weather,

no profusion of color to fill a vase or press in a book. Your passion

was burgeoning fruit and nut trees, arches of branches sticky with burrs,

leathery shells of delicate fuzz— how you reveled in texture and form!

I think of you when walking a path knotty with hulls or fallen fruit,

trees bent over in season. I wish you could see I am not so much

ornamental as something of use— a vessel, a tool, food on the table.

And like any harvest part of my crop is riddled with spots and worms.