Caring
and not caring
if the words find their way
off the page
and into the warm darkness
where roots join and tangle
and the tree
joins the forest
He put down his pencil to dig a pit
on the sunny side of his house
and plant the apricot sapling
grown from seed by a friend,
planted not just in appreciation of fruit’s softness,
or the way the furry globes float
like orange planets
in the blue New Mexico sky,
nor even in remembrance
of his mother’s apricot empanadas
and the tree she tended after their final divorce
with buckets of water carried from her bath,
but also in anticipation
of the winter buds’ tightly folded scales
breaking open to reveal
heart shaped leaves.
—
Joe Lamb, founder of the Borneo Project, is a writer, activist, and arborist living in Berkeley, California. His poetry and essays have appeared in Earth Island Journal, The Sun, Caliban, Wind, Orion, Nostos, and other magazines. His work is also included in the anthologies The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology (Robert Bly et al editors), and Veterans of War/Veterans of Peace (Maxine Hong Kingston, editor).
