Poetry Porch: Poetry

 

CRABAPPLE BLOOMING
by Kathleen Kirk

Over the broken fence (tornado, tree)
the crabapple opens magenta against
a vague blue (rain later, or tomorrow).
My diary now is weather reports.
Finally I understand the diary keepers
of history, in love with each new day
or in struggle with nature for their lives
or livelihoods. The bloom laden branch
carried their inner lives then as now.
After the storm, we pruned this tree
for our neighbor, off in a nursing home.
(Her sister keeps the empty house
for her to visit, someday a saleable asset.)
Evidently, we helped the crabapple survive.
The topmost blossoms are red silhouettes
now against the oncoming pale gathering
of the sky. I could almost step over
the bend in the fence, the low “U”
of metal shaped by tree trunk, now
chopped up, carted away, only a stump
lifting from the grass. But the crabapple,
somehow freed, more present to available sun,
lives in the (changing) now as I do, that word,
“now,” falling like petals everywhere
on the lawn (tomorrow, or the next day).


Copyright © 2016 by Kathleen Kirk.