Osage Orange

1

Still, it is not the grass that fastens the eye, but (what is that?) the green-glimmering,                                                                                green-warted roundness of an Osage orange— Maclura pomifera. Hedge apple. Horse apple. Bois d’arc. Bodark.                                                                                Geelhout. Rootwood. Yellow-wood.Kansas orange. Irish snowball. Hedge ball. Monkey ball. Brain fruit.                                                                                American breadfruit— the tree favored by Osage Indians for bow wood. (Can you eat it?) It is only squirrel                                                                                fodder, the trash tree used before barbed wire—horse-high, bull-strong, pig-tight—to make the poor man’s fence,                                                                                its hedges planted to tether restless soil, the testament of hands never clean of dirt or drought, or the doubtful                                                                                chance men labor for.

2

They planted seed, a chance to stake land and thwart foreclosure: the Great Plains                                                                                Shelterbelt: 220 million trees, 30,233 shelterbelts: 18,600 miles. Osage oranges sprawl under thorny limbs, like green                                                                                coals, like lanterns in an upstairs room lit to temper darkness or bid the traveler home. Like memory, an                                                                                 Osage Orange tree has its uses—ward, weapon, wall—its hedge can halt or turn the eye, always someone                                                                                 to sow its modest seed, to boil its sapwood, woodchip, and bark for a lemony-yellow dye, not gold but                                                                                good enough.

3

Not gold—brownish-yellow—good enough (for how many boys?) for dye, to color                                                                                tunic, britches, puttees, the khaki-colored wools and cottons worn Over there! Over there! Boys fall,                                                                                sprawled in heaps like dirty rags, miles of cloth. Decades after the war, from fields worn by plow or                                                                                weather, mud-sotted scraps—a cuff, an insignia, a sleeve—snag into light bearing their dull stains,                                                                                forgotten remnants, their color taken from the pith of an Osage orange, a brownish-green dye                                                                                sealed with smoke, with gas, with fire, with bloodied wire, with the breath of boys writing their last                                                                                 letters home. The stains (how many boys?) are insoluble. They will never wash out, permanent as grief.