The Apple Garden
Since we cannot meet, my gaze goes to the blossom
it's countless ways of blending carmine into white
and laying both against a complementing green;
but choose however many stems I lean towards
when I inhale there's only scent there for me.
*
I didn't tell you this but when you left
I went through all your rooms and in the bathroom bin
found a drum of body powder with enough left in
when I turned the four holes in the top and tapped it out
against my skin to sense the touch of you again.
*
It's more than a taking off of make-up
when the last petal falls, it's a turning inwards
or a facing away -- becoming something no one
sees or thinks twice about: it's just a tree
that's all, perhaps that's all it ever was.
*
I write to ask: Is everything provisional?
You write that blossom is, but not good friendship
or lovers who are friends. It's months until we meet again,
until the tree reappears, blushed and glorious
under its apples. All it takes is our belief.
