Naked now, you look like
the lanky corpse
of the boy who fell
from your canopy
last century.
He climbed up
high as his petal white
arms would pull him
to have, all to himself,
the sweetest pears.
Young—you both were—you
with a cold coat of rain,
a wet black trunk,
he with his slippery
sureness. His daddy
found him like that:
black hair, lily skin,
a broken-neck boy
in tall grass beside you—
a siren still singing Come up,
come up, and taste me.
I have tasted you, wicked
tree, generations later, you
at your best, beckoning
me. I have held the fat
perfect rumps of pears,
the smooth skin,
the rusty freckles,
my deep bite bursting
flesh so easy in my mouth,
I almost feel the juice
glaze my chin even now,
almost see broad green
on your limbs, which,
though slick with ice,
reach out to embrace me, to coo,
Any snap of the neck
is worth it, for a smell,
for a taste, for a piece of me
● ● ●
