“…anyone who planted the tree would never live to taste its fruit.”

He wanted a mulberry tree so he planted one

She helped (with a toy shovel)

He held her hand steady around the watering can

Now (he is years gone) the mulberry tree holds fruit.

Sharing blueberry peach dessert

with a cornflake crust (nothing tastes as perfect

as memory)

Cold spray of a water hose and the neighbor’s

pool (dipping under, he’d burst through the surface

taking her with him)

Afternoon sunbeams from Sunday’s nap,

glasses askew, she’d take them carefully

from his face and hide (giggle when he woke,

I can’t see! Where are you?)

Now peaches taste like yearning

the mulberries are sour

and the pool always burns.

What would her grandfather think:

too tired to go on a walk after dinner

shunting joy off her back

she does not make pies anymore.

What she remembers are pieces

of a life (served from the plates

of others), what she knows

from careful mouths is

the slow fading of a person.

​​She wonders

what it must be like:

dying in a crisp white cot

to think your grandchildren, seeds

you planted long ago,

will not remember the heart of you

when they are grown.