Like a summer peach
you tasted so sweet
I bit into you harder
so you wouldn't feel the ache
but deep beneath the pain
and all of the regret
was a deep and rotten pit
and you wouldn't grow again

Hard and strong
like an oak
with withered branches
and dying leaves
you climb at first with ease
but closer to the top
your limbs start to fall away
and as you reach the top
a sad heart lies still.

The old oak tree grew at the edge,
of an orchard where little ones play,
and there lived a mage,
who hears trees on a windy day,

Rushing wind rustles leaves,
on that one day brilliant and bright,
With amber gold autumn grandeur on display,
singing tuneful songs delightfully light and gay,
Apple trees trilling events as mysterious as night,
Of love found and lost last May.

The Oak tree in the garden fasts
her luscious bodice skinned
Though dream we did that autumn last,
none could conquer cold coarse wind

Ethereal laces, red and gold
once cloaked her graceful form
As sun-warmed skin, turned white with cold
flesh falls like ladies’ laces torn

Light which drenched her leaves ’til soaked
has vanished long with autumn’s coat
Instead, bare arms, broken and *****
Fight November’s bitter, bleak demote

And then one day I check upon her
Has winter’s brutal beating claimed
vict’ry by that cruel crisp monster
gainst my garden’s fairest dame?

Alas, my prize has not been slain
her beauty ne’er been thieved
For in the night the winter came,
but dressed her as a queen!

Under folds of whitest silk she stands
draped in drops of diamond light
Defeated crude and forceful hands
bow down to such exquisite might

So once again she rises,
sleek and silver stands she now
Transformed by winter’s laces whitest
she shall remain my garden crown

Pretty soon the conkers would be falling, she could already see their
plump, cherubim bodies
spiked and dangling
like baubles,
or those underwater bombs,
from the oak leaves,
hanging limp.

The first time you flew
you told the birds how unfair
it is that the air is so much
thinner up here,
that below they have to breathe
the crushing weight of the
stratosphere
just because they’re accustomed
to it, and your gasping
for breath doesn’t make
any noise yet
every day you choose life,

man and wife
man and wife

placed in a gunfight with a pocket knife
and a guidebook of expectation.
You don’t remember filling out an
application for this life, for
now-flightless wings and for being
their daughter,

I will love you
come hell or high water

and the first time you flew
you heard birds laugh at you
and the air was so thin
you fell right through,
and the silence so thick
you landed hard,
lungs aching,
but you were never afraid of the dark,

in the high water
watch out for sharks

because you aren’t one for stark
contrasts and it’s nice to feel
like nothing at all,
keep falling.

The first time you didn’t
write a poem you drank tea
out of a paper cup, no mug
in the sink, no need for anyone
to look up when she came home.
The first time you used the key
in your new house’s door
it fit so perfectly that you didn’t feel
at home anymore,
and the first time you were afraid of the dark
you weren’t,
because it can’t get you
if it can’t see you’ve left any mark.

The first time you didn’t
write a poem the *** boiled
even though you watched,
and you drank tea out of a paper cup
and no one looked up, it was
biodegradable and then it was
gone.

The first time you flew.
The first time you really saw you.
The first time you heard that
song called poison oak,
the first time you said what you
meant to say,
the last time you spoke.

The tree's knarled,
melted bark dripped down
the warm, burnt umber
in its spokes, dropping mellowed honey as we climbed the branches.
We spoke of sweet things
like the kind frosts creeping into the valleys of misted bloom, as the silver crescents rise higher by day,
entangled by wreathes of smoke.
We spoke of that very oak tree and how it's palsied trunk had witnesses so many fires.
We spoke of love and how (despite the cliche) we can not live without each other. We together will beat on through the charms of the cold thistle.
We dance round the dusky colonnades as the stars shatter around us and the moon's cancerous head rides higher.

Cold days and snowy nights
dissolve into the glow
when we come home from the sweater weather.
In from the cozy autumn day.
In from a day in which sunlight
dappled the tree's bark
like the zig-zagged icing
and french dough.
A day of mittens so only your thumbs protrude.
A day like kittens which tumble in
happiness and innocence.
Into the oak, with the window
in which tear drops
chase themselves away
down the pane and
the cool air is made hot
with cocoa frothy cream
and pumpkin.
We smoke on curled cinnamon sticks
which splinter like burnt logs
on an fire of embers.
The silhouettes of our shadows
catch on the horizon
as we watch the spectrum
scatter from the warm
cream to the dusty
pumpkin to cocoa.