Orchard

Dusk sky draped loose
over arching boughs, its reddened ends
tucked deep into valleys
behind hills worn with age and rain.

Stained glass shadows
sprawled in the grass.
A light wind, sweetly rocking
the blossoms off the vine.

Orange, acorn-shaped:
heavy fruit hanging,
lunging groundward.
Some fallen, skin peeling
with innards slick
like the skin of an eel.

Picking one, the quiet ache of the unfamiliar
like the first time you saw the Pacific.
Like the first time you ate one,
overripe.

You came home cradling
a pile of big beating orange hearts,
one small persimmon flower among them.
White and silk, petals thin and veined
like the weaving tributaries of Sunday River.

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We rose like two
blue balloons.
You, especially
full of hot air.
And blue because
that's the color
of bursts and flickers
I see when I close
my eyes from cold
and crying on the slab
of city sidewalk
I lost and then found
my coat's blue button on—
and the same small square
where I stood while you,
silent and still
on the other line,
deflated.

West

Colorado was beautiful. I walked barefoot in the snow on a mountain and saw black swans and met his family and rode on a train straight into the bottom of a gorge.