I stared at mother at a loss
For years I’d drifted, the river
while she befell rock moss.
The bee flew to a flower flowing my recall
The precipice of her perpetual petal love poisoned by a plague
Her now useless hands could no longer plant
yet the velvet crab shell glowed in violet.
Its spotlight penetrated the yard in this dark sky
The overgrown grass somehow bare, muddy bones
The brushes waterlogged skeletons weighed down with age
The stumps of once towering heroes never fully tossed
now remembrance of a time long passed.  

I shined on only what I could
the purples and pinks
surrounding its wood.
I lied of the blessed beauty of its brilliant bloom
beating bad memories because of her religion
her struggle with life in ways of death
But as always my awkwardness led to embarrassment
Quietly she guilted her needle through my apparent dishonest sympathy
He hated her so you never appreciated her
He claimed her hindrance on the grass which was his
Shading it from the son’s warmth
hacking into her while she stood
preventing her from proper growth 

He forgot she was alive
she was spiritual
that three days a year she would thrive. 
I asked her why seeing her was a blur.
Because this years’ bloom is unheard 
Never as long nor beautiful
Her last best was your communion
Yet it’s been weeks and she’s still painting. 
a thick covered canvas of purples and pinks
spots of blue where the sky peaks through
When I was beautiful I used to lie for hours
I’d stare up from her trunk into her flowers
sun crossed the sky and the light would dive
slicing the pinks into white.

When the warm wind blew
purple snowflakes danced down
kissing my cheeks like lovers anew
Tickled my nose with what I knew was short bliss
only to abandon me once it was finished
When the years washed her and the colors ran
He grew tired and forgetful so she leaved  
Only with a glimpse until this last appeal
to survival, a farewell, an appreciation or fear of who’s next
This the last we’d spoke of worth
Now I creek like warped wood where I stand
I peer through the rails alone
and appeal for that burst of color to last
the way it had that only she knew
The way it had when I signed her over

 the crab apples bloom

selected from "the Evolution of a poet"

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the crab apples bloom
 
The suns rays shined down hard into my eyes
Like they’d always done
As we sat in silence staring at the lies
of the day.
Anything but to focus on ourselves and each other.
Behind the rails of the deck porch jail
On rust dirt chairs neither wise
to nature’s game in my birth house backyard.

Thoughts steamed passed the needle of my head
rising haltlessly like a record unheard
failing to be read.
I remembered the days of the pool
the garden, the weeping willow
it’s trunk so high and round
too difficult to climb
until that day when childhood is bled.
And the pine at the separation of the house

climbing its close clustered bone
we used to hide in it
as sap coated our tone
and gelled the hairs on our knees
Stretched outward to the clouds
starring down the willow
The man on the widow
weeping as it towered over her
with pride in its cone
Its eternal existence through the cold.

Overshadowed between and lost
fringes of a lace skirt
to the pattern and the cost
The exposure of her shape
the hidden appeal
For years they’d forgotten her
her beauty they’d steal.
As the cats came with their teeth
and the peacocks with their paper
Its last act of power and frost
with a smirk and a wink 

the crab apples bloom