On the shoulder of I-84’s overpass as eastbound enters Portland, an almond tree lets down its fruit.
Her petals, pink the same as preschoolers color the sky and white as the paper beneath the wax, tremble in the violence of Internationals and Peterbilts, the same violence that grabs fistfuls of my sweater in intervals.
Jack under, jack up, lug nuts off after a fight and this freeway tumbles in a storm of those flowers cast off in April-sun, I am down a layer and sweaty.
Steel wire arcs where sidewall was and rubber gralloch marks its death, those eight seconds of braking behind, those eleven tree species lined as a windbreak.
I am lucky to have stopped beneath this almond. It is the only tree in bloom along this stretch. Its softness has lessened the day. Her olfactory embrace deadens that of axle grease and sunrot. I am not afraid of those trucks passing a wrench-span away. This is enough, for now.