Memories On Branches

How did a cherry kiss? Bitter flower petals with sweet pistils. So laden they act as halos while we breathe the love in a pink hollow, silence sounding like taste, acting like epistle to hold this moment in a silvery image, like moon, or dove low, low, a bowl formed while sunshine flickers above. Chains of yellow petals hang over our deck, the leaves hands-- offer welcome resting branch, our sheltered home. Seeds follow close, fragile like beans, hard case to feed the land crawl before God, they say, be grateful as we weed and stir loam. Together seeds and flowers and hands make a life a poem. Awaiting the sumac, the flame at summer's ending is fruitless we've passed the feathering, the pimping of red underneath bristle the deer horn softness crawling out in oddest places in a mess lining the sand pond, above the purpled iris, the pestle of stone and sun, no rain to bring down sumac's fiery trestle. Vulturous crows squawk and fight the ring-billed sea gulls waiting, one in the bared hollow hands of the cottonwood the other fat-bellied and waddling after rain finally dulls we're under hoodies, under shivers, our neighborhood waits the pinking and mossing, will it unfurl new wood?