When I roam the real forest
grumpy apple trees spit their spoiled rotten children on
my shoulders knowing I will collect them
and mash their cores into cider.

Their leaves refuse to form shadows nor shade me, letting
the sun scorch my monk’s crown deep cardinal red.

The weeping willows shed snickers not tears.

The oaks refuse their goodness  
and discernment, all their wisdom.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out “***** coming!”

Yet, I shade the thing I love
even as they shout out, “Go away, away.
Go home. Go home now.”

Still, my little Pomchi girl knowing forest from the trees
bows down to ***, bends backwards to ****
in full glory of all the angry, angry leaves.  

Note:
The Mary Oliver poem mimicked here can be read at:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/09/23/amanda-palmer-mary-oliver-when-i-am-among-the-trees/

As I exit
the world of green dinosaurs
fused from abandoned rusty automobiles      
and steaming in  the sun,
a child offered me a giant peach
harvested from a Palisade tree
grown in the valley’s katabatic winds.
  
It tasted of harsh-sweet stolen pleasures,
lust and greed and love and dried fruit,
full of Ute tears and diverted waters,
memories between prayers and laments  
buried deep, sprouting new
on rolling plains laced with spice
breezes and Buffalo.

It had evolved flesh pregnant with two hemispheres  
to be split midway
by thumbs meant to be coated with pulp
juice pooling to palm lifelines.

I knew it fed me its sweetness
in cupped hands, not a gift
but a sacrifice to be sniffed
and tasted like an old vintage
barreled decades for a loving tongue.

Its red blush collapsed into
a  tawny mass that matched the day’s light,
remaining fuzzy flesh a gold skull—
the ancient colors full of guilt and redemption
and red shame and love and twilight,
a thing existing slightly
out of season, fully sweet
yet almost taboo, almost cursed,
the lustful last bite of life.

I bought a half dozen more peaches from the parent
standing slightly just behind the child
busy cradling them into a paper craft bag
rolling them into darkness far from light
and the frozen extinction crushed
by the din of overpass traffic from above.

I noticed the sun fade from the earth,
a scorned lover removing her gaze,
until there exists a tattoo
memory of love and ripening peaches.

I took the small change
aware that the peaches would rot to
mold, uneaten, unwanted, the pit unplanted.

Notes:

A katabatic wind  is a drainage wind, a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a ***** under the force of gravity.

1
After Adam died Eve
designed a house of wooden ribs.
2
She created it to never burn down.
3
It was full of happy walls and
bright colors that never faded.
(The next owner painted them gray.)
4
The rainbow colors would daub off
on every guest’s fingerprint,
an intended souvenir.
5
Nautilus shells placed near all windows
breathed the gentlest light everywhere
6
A stone pyramid staircase
snaked up to the second floor.
7
Doves could be heard cooing
peacefully from above.
8
There was a room with a writing desk that
everyone thought was a guest bedroom
but was really her office.
9
Abel’s name was carved
into all the door mantles.
10
On Sundays, after church, she invited
the children to slide through all the
crannies they could find
11
Outside, oaks and weeping willows
formed the boundary line.
12
When she died
they grew closer
to the house,
their limbs outstretched
as if in mourning.
13
When the government cataloged the house,
forgetting that she was a businesswoman,
they noted it officially as Adam’s property.
14
The next homeowner remodeled it poorly and
it burned down two days after they moved in.

As when his son, a pensive animal lover,
on his first hunt,
had to face the doe in his scope,
his first **** lined up for the taking,
breath held firmly before trigger plunge,
the forest circling, fear trembling his lips,
doe moving from view, gaze,
his father behind, a looming granite mountain
crushing him
like an avalanche of scold that he could not,
despite his determination,
could really climb from,
his finger unwilling to pull the trigger,
even with his father
tugging his arm in death’s directions
as the miss hit sap and freed doe
from their sight.

so facing his death
the father gripped the old bedsheets,
trigger fingers cocked
and son did not dare
slap his hands
away.

If lucky I will die in a room
of non-hospital green, on plump pillows,
good linens, with good family and good friends,
the ghosts of loves, the odorama
of nitrate seas, forests or mountains on
walls.
Room where well-cast dreams lived and died.

Will my death be the end of a long love,
mystery, tragedy or comedy,
flashback to life or final nightmare?

Will your face be the  last frame or just
the quieter, dustier bed
out there in the sun— the rain?

Blow the dust of history off our bones.
In the excavated ribs of ancient sailing ships
find the burial chambers of kings.

Blow the dust of history off our bones.
In the dig just below them,  but just over
the rubble of the blitz are the
cracks in the golden cathedral’s dome.

Blow the dust of history off our bones.
Hear the cough of the newborn that
ends unknown years later to the last ahem.

Blow the dust off history off our bones.
In the oil that bubbles up see the
trilobites, dinosaurs layered in the sludge.

Blow the dust of history of our bones.
Place the femur of all  misery neatly
on the museum shelf for all to see.

Every year I knowingly cross the unknown
date that will complete my tombstone,
the day last fires will turn  ice and
my deafness will make the silence
my true and final friend- and I will cradle
the earth that cuddles my mother.

Maybe I will share that anniversary
with her or some dear friend but
undoubtedly with other millions passed.
The shadows know the date but are quiet
and are shameless in keeping it private.
Today there are poems to write and
quiet and noisy, loud and silent times to
live until the last song of my nightingale.