Orchards hang in the evening air,
splayed along alluvial bottomland
like sagging, vast, corporeal mists,
ordered rows of sentient sentinels.
Were these groves indeed a flowing fog,
like rivers they would part to pass
islets of plowed and piled-up stone
or knots of legate cottonwood and pine.
But these greyed and potent trunks
do not move, save within my soul,
rooted as they are in pregnant soil,
vivid against mergent greens and pinks.
Over half a million outstretched arms
bear annual witness to this cultive rite,
last to bud, last to blossom, last to bear:
never more dead than in the throes of spring.