by Loralee Clark
This grizzled orchard
stares mute;
brown-veined pirouettes caught
in the swaying of stilled time
amid lace-winged muck
creeping in with hackberry queens,
tawny fritillaries, and the ruddy daggers
of decay.
I study them:
pallid vestals alone in the frost,
unabashed in their spiky crystal embraces.
If they long for orange-barred heat, quick and passionate
to melt the rime, to turn them into chalky coal,
it is impossible to know—
these silvered mosaic boughs,
these stiff stretching soldiers of carriage and decorum,
these beautiful reminders of home.