May 10, 2018In the Pipeline’s Path
for Red Terry
Pippins and scarlet oaks, she said.
She took to her tree
because she knew she’d never see
any of this again—
the wayward field,
the water meadow filled
with late spring rain
filtering down through
karst-pocked caves
to the aquifer’s hidden well.
The way southeastern trees
turkey-call against each other
when they rub high branches
in high wind.
She lived
in the whippoorwill’s liquid note.
Pippen—the name for an apple
that used to mean seed—
is an old word for a new world.
And most of the orchards are gone.
The few rows she still has she has
not for money, but to know
that the animals come—
black bear, deer, the careful raccoon—
to eat the windfall turning sweet in tall grass,
to leave behind scat bejeweled with seed,
tracks of paw print and claw,
rubbed bark, the bitten twig.
from Poets Respond