THE APPLE TREE

If you had a garden, you would plant

an apple tree. If you had an apple tree

you would make pies. Lots of pies.

You would invite your friends

round for pie and say we picked

these apples from our garden.

You would send them home

with bags of apples.

Your daughter would read in its shade

and swing from its branches.

Summer would be better.

And in winter you would pull

a bag of peeled, chopped

apples from the freezer

as if autumn never ended.

Your property value would increase.

And when it came time to sell,

you would tell the buyers

that you planted the tree

from a seed, which wouldn’t be a lie,

because it could have happened

at a house with a garden.

GHOST ORCHID

Though my daughter is not yet five,

already she has a small ghost inside her.

It arrived in the form of a question.

Will I die? she asks with an air that suggests

she doubts the inevitability of this condition.

Yes, I tell her, all living things die.

I try not to linger on this cruelness. Such waste.

She does not understand that her question

opens the door to my own death, my mother’s.

As she aged, my grandmother’s hands

became roots, desperate for life beyond

her body. Perhaps my daughter’s misgivings

are justified. Think of the impossible

flowers growing in moss-slung bogs.

In black heat they open, die, and are born again.

PROMISES

When you’re tired and it’s October and the mornings

are dark and your hands are cold and the condensation

has returned, you find yourself thinking about promises.

How you gave the house your word: to repair

cracked plaster, fix taps, replace broken tiles, to paint

the window frame before the wall begins to stream,

before the wood becomes so mildew-black it grows

into a forest. A forest you enter when sleep does not come.

A forest blackening like nightfall, like carelessness, like crows.

Think of the roof, feet above your daughter’s head. Think

of what you said as you kneeled beside her. You are safe.

There is nothing to fear. Be grateful the house keeps its promise.